


Ricochet

by severinne



Series: The Wind and Its Satellite [9]
Category: Star Trek AOS
Genre: Angst, Jealousy, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:34:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1888596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/severinne/pseuds/severinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCoy needs to pass his flight qualification before he can hope to serve on the Enterprise under Captain Pike, but he can only turn to Jim for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Once, a lifetime ago, McCoy had lived in more space than he knew how to use. From a hand-me-down farmhouse with more bedrooms than people to the sprawling cosmopolitan apartment he had shared with Jocelyn in Atlanta, he had long grown accustomed to having a wide bearth: if anything, more space than was entirely decent for the family man he should have been.

 _Too much space_ … what he wouldn’t give to remember what the hell that was like.

This was as generous as his life got these days, when a rare alignment of class schedules, clinic shifts and extracurriculars gave McCoy the sole use of his shared dorm room for a whole afternoon and often into the evening. Jim’s absence didn’t do much to make the rudimentary space seem any bigger, but it did provide the quiet he needed to get some proper studying done.

At least, it was quiet enough when the repetitive chirrup of the door chime wasn’t shredding away the thin, tentative edge of his calm.

With a reproachful glare at the door, McCoy cringed lower into his chair and buried his attention deeper into his PADD. The only chimes that ever came to that door were invariably from Jim’s infantile classmates and occasional bed partners, none of whom would want to see McCoy any more than he wanted to see them. He stubbornly shut out the seventh chime as fiercely as the first six. ‘Go away,’ he muttered under his breath, reaching blindly for a cross reference from his desk. ‘Just go… the hell… away…’

Those first warning beeps were familiar enough, but came too quick to leave McCoy anything but stunned when the door whisked open beneath the force of an override code. The irritation simmering at the edge of his nerves spiked with a ferocity that had him tossing both PADDs back to the desk and leaping to his feet. ‘And what the blazing hell gives you the goddamn right to come barging… oh.’

Captain Pike stalled just inside the door that was already sliding shut behind him, his sole show of hesitation at McCoy’s fleeting flare of temper. Otherwise, both the tilt of his head and the squint of his eye were more amused than alarmed.

‘Most cadets would salute when the Academy Commandant walks into their quarters, you know,’ he greeted lightly.

‘Most cadets around here would also jump off the Golden Gate Bridge at your say-so, so don’t go holding your breath.’ He hoped his gruff tone concealed the flutter of pleasure that had erupted in his chest at the unexpected sight of his lover. And truth be told, it was hard to defer to the Captain when he was so nicely wrapped in a tailored civilian suit, dark blue and flattering to the lean lines of his body. ‘And most folk don’t make a habit of breaking into other folk’s private rooms.’

‘I did try the chime first.’

‘Maybe I wasn’t in.’ Enticed by Pike’s first step forward, McCoy drew closer by one lazy stride, bare feet silent on the institutional carpet.

‘I might have believed that if I didn’t have access to a campus-wide surveillance network that told me otherwise.’

McCoy returned Pike’s slow smirk as well as another exchange of footsteps. ‘I think, Captain, that they call that an abuse of power,’ he drawled.

‘Might be,’ Pike agreed breezily, eyes sweeping down the length of McCoy’s body as the space between them narrowed to centimetres. ‘Planning to file a complaint, Cadet?’

‘Hell, no.’ Unable to tease a moment longer, McCoy slid a hand into the invitation of Pike’s open shirt collar and pressed every height advantage he had over the other man to pull him into a greedy kiss. His Chris hummed appreciatively as he parted his lips, accepting the swift attack of McCoy’s tongue sweeping his mouth with an equal return of strength. A possessive hand captured the small of his back, drew them tighter together as they indulged in each other’s taste and touch, hands slipping into familiar caresses even as their lips drew reluctantly apart for breath.

With their faces still so close, the warmth of Pike’s grin was incandescent. ‘Hey, beautiful,’ he greeted, a low teasing hush against his lips.

‘Hey yourself, darling.’ He drew his thumbs over Pike’s high cheekbones. ‘So what brings you slumming it through the dorms?’

‘Do you really need to ask?’ Pike turned his face aside to press a kiss to the inside of McCoy’s wrist. ‘And less of the slumming, we keep our cadets in very good conditions. Better than in my day,’ he added with a low grumble.

‘Did you have to share a room with Jim Kirk?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Have you seen this place?’

‘Actually…’ Pike made a show of looking around, taking in Jim’s mess with an arched eyebrow. ‘No, I haven’t. Then again, that’s half the reason I’m here. Doesn’t seem right, does it?’

‘What doesn’t?’

‘All this time and I haven’t taken you in your own bed.’

McCoy choked back a longing groan, fingers curling deeper into Pike’s hair. The truth of it caught him off guard, especially given how many of his earliest erotic thoughts about this man had unwound in that bed. Some of those fantasies had even featured his narrow dorm bunk in elaborately unlikely scenarios in which Pike would somehow steal into his room in the dead of night and ravish him out of a deep sleep that would leave him too weak to resist all the perverse liberties Pike would take from his body, all while miraculously not waking Jim in the next bed. Except for the times when Jim was stirred awake by the sounds of their rough furtive sex and would watch, or more than watch...

A slow, filthy kiss interrupted the dizzy trail of his thoughts and startled McCoy back into reality with a muffled moan. As desperately as he craved his Chris right here and now, the next words to slip from his mouth between feverish kisses were stupid, downright counterproductive.

‘Jim,’ he said nonsensically, cringing as Pike drew back with a frown. ‘I mean... he’s usually in class now, but what if...’

Comprehension cleared the hint of a shadow lurking behind Pike’s eyes. ‘It’s fine,’ he said assuredly. ‘I just handed his seminar group off to Commander Rurikara. He’ll be stuck running physical fitness drills for the next three hours at least.’

‘Well, isn’t that a lucky coincidence,’ he murmured, relief flooding his bloodstream as he allowed himself to relax into Pike’s body. ‘Not too much of a coincidence, I hope.’

‘I saw an opportunity,’ Pike shrugged as he slipped a hand down between McCoy’s legs, weighing his arousal in confident fingers. Their lips met again, by instinct more than calculation as their hands began to roam and explore, at once familiar and charged with all the repressed urgency of a first encounter in days, in _weeks_. The pressure of Pike’s hands – one groping at his cock, the other tight upon his shoulder – coaxed him backwards by miniscule steps that McCoy barely noticed through his fixation on Pike’s clever tongue until a bed frame struck the backs of his knees and he tumbled with a low grunt onto a rumpled mattress. Pike fell upon him, nuzzling the line of his jaw, a hand slipping beneath his t-shirt but as McCoy gasped in an eager breath he froze with a shudder of scent recognition.

‘Wait…’ His hands rose to Pike’s chest, holding him reluctantly at bay. ‘Wrong bed…’

‘What?’ Pike lifted his head from McCoy’s neck, stared incredulously sidelong at the lightly rumpled sheets, then back to the unmade neighbouring bunk. ‘Shit,’ he growled, ‘you’re as bad as he is.’

‘Been a bad week,’ he muttered back, embarrassment deepening his flush as Pike dragged him back to his feet. There was far less preamble on the short journey to McCoy’s bunk; Pike yanked his shirt over his head before toppling him backward again onto his own bed. Air fled his lungs, left McCoy breathless as Pike shrugged off his jacket and plucked open the buttons on his shirt before climbing onto his body.

‘Guess I’ll have to make it better,’ Pike murmured as he slipped his tongue in a silken tease across McCoy’s lips before delving in for a deeper kiss. An appreciative moan rolled up the back of McCoy’s arched throat as he hooked a leg around Pike’s hips, tugged him closer to the pressure of McCoy’s thigh between his legs. Entangled like this, his own erection found its first relief in that perfect hollow alongside Pike’s hipbone and thrust feverishly upward, rutting eagerly in time to the tongue wetly fucking his mouth.

Pike drew away from him breathlessly, still rubbing off against McCoy’s thigh. ‘Do you have…’ he began, not needing to continue as McCoy nodded urgently.

‘In the drawer there.’ He shifted beneath Pike’s body, straining to reach but Pike stopped him with a firm kiss that knocked him back down to the mattress.

‘Stay.’ He threw off the fine cloth of his shirt and leaned aside to open the bedside drawer. The taut plane of Pike’s hard torso was a tempting stretch above him, luring him to worship his flexed abdominal muscles with his mouth even as Pike went oddly still above him. This shouldn’t be taking so long, not when he always kept the lube in pathetically close reach but then Pike drew something more than a slim bottle from the drawer and McCoy cringed with embarrassment.

‘Now, I think I recall you mentioning this to me once or twice,’ Pike murmured as his eye slid along the length of the sleek dildo he had found in that damned drawer. McCoy knew it far too well, having bought it in the feverish days after his first time with Chris in futile hope that its fake length sliding inside him would somehow placate the urges that had haunted him after that impulsive, wine sodden night. Even after he had succumbed, the dildo remained a guilty pleasure that eased the long loneliness between unpredictable meetings – an indulgence, but always a solitary one.

‘Yeah, well...’ He looked pointedly away from the incriminating thing, clearing his throat around the nervous rasp in his voice. ‘Don’t need that now I’ve got the real thing right here…’ McCoy drew his hand down around Pike’s hip, finding and fondling the erection straining at his pants in hope of derailing whatever wicked thought was firing the sharp glint in Pike’s eye. A promising moan and thrust of Pike’s cock into his hand almost had him convinced he had succeeded, at least until Pike slid back down his body, dildo still in hand.

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Pike said softly, lips curving into a filthy smirk. ‘Why would I ever deprive you of the chance to get fucked by two cocks?’

McCoy sucked in a startled breath. ‘Is that what you want to do with me, darling?’ he murmured, wrapping an arm low around Pike’s hips and grinding their erections hard together. ‘Fuck me open with that thing, then take me while I’m all loose and wet for you?’

‘Fuck, Leo…’ With a low groan, Pike buried his face against McCoy’s heaving chest, fingers clenching tight at his bicep. Despite his own mounting arousal, McCoy managed a triumphant grin to himself, pleased to feel his lover’s control faltering in time to his own.

‘Is that a yes?’

The only response Pike gave was a feral scraping of teeth down to his belly as he tugged urgently at his jeans, yanking hard to work the stiff fabric down his thighs. He cast the last of McCoy’s clothes impatiently aside and swiftly stripped himself naked in his haste to return to the narrow bed, stretched on his side and urging McCoy to follow suit with an entwining arm, a hand that dragged his thigh up to rest on the jut of Pike’s hip. The change in position brought them face to face again, close enough for McCoy to stifle a whine of pleasure in a greedy kiss as his cock tripped over Pike’s pelvic arch. A hand squeezed his ass, encouraging him to rut more deliberately before teasing further down, slipping into the cleft of him with a cool, slick touch that shuddered McCoy out of their kiss with a gasp. It seemed Chris had found the lube after all.

‘Is this what you want?’ From this close, those clear blue eyes were bottomless; McCoy could see deeper than the heat and the hunger, could see the calculation and consideration that waited on his shaky exhale, his slow, inviting smile.

‘Yes,’ he whispered, thrusting up tight to Pike’s body as a fingertip lightly circled his hole, sparking off the surface of his skin before sinking home, all the way to the knuckle. The depth of it shot hard through him, caught him unprepared for the ache and the answering throb of his prostate, _so close_ to the stimulation it craved but the finger was already sliding away, then back with two, so much slower now and nowhere near enough. Eyes squeezing shut, McCoy clung to Pike with hands and teeth and raised thigh, shuddering with anticipation.

‘You want more than this, I know…’ Pike whispered into his ear, pitched to soothe despite the cruelty of those fingers. A kiss brushed over his throat before the mattress shifted beneath his shoulder. McCoy groaned a wordless protest as Pike withdraw by some unseen degree, grappling blindly to keep that hard body close until something cool and slick met his reaching hand and startled his eyes open with a sharp intake of breath.

‘Show me how you want it,’ he murmured as he pressed the dildo into McCoy’s hand.

‘What?’ He stared blankly between Pike’s fervent gaze and the toy. Allowing Pike to fuck him with it had been an appealing enough idea once he had gotten used to it; now, the dildo felt like a ridiculous weight in his hand.

‘I said, show me.’ Pike’s command breathed hot against his lips, thick with arousal. ‘I want to see what you get up to in this bed of yours… how you keep yourself ready for me when I’m not around to fuck you as hard as you need it…’

That rough encouragement, that catch of a needy rasp in Pike’s voice, crumbled McCoy’s last reservations to dust. Even as he felt a self-conscious heat climb his constricted throat, his body was responding on impulsive desire: arm stretching backward, hips tilting and thigh straining to open himself to his own touch.

He tried to hold Pike’s gaze while he angled the dildo into himself, but those lust-glazed blue eyes flickered hungrily downward and McCoy had to turn his face into Pike’s shoulder to bury a moan, to hide his lingering embarrassment. The dildo tripped awkwardly in his hand before its smooth head found its place at his hole, scarcely stretched enough to yield to the first testing push of the toy. Biting at his lower lip, McCoy shoved stubbornly past the initial discomfort, allowing primal pleasure to guide his hand and repressing a sharp, keening noise behind his clenched teeth as he writhed into the thick, welcome sensation of being filled anew. His mouth sagged open as he exhaled into the sensation, released an unsteady moan as he teased the dildo back and thrust deeper, harder.

‘Fuck… look at you…’ Pike shifted up the narrow bed, drawing frustratingly away and leaving McCoy feeling even more exposed as his lover’s reassuring weight settled against the bed’s feeble headboard. A faint whimper crawled up the back of his throat as Pike brushed the ends of his hair from his brow, his entire body twisting towards the closeness it already missed. The sideways turn of his head found Pike’s firm thigh; McCoy rubbed his cheek into its strength, nosed his way closer to the unmistakable scent of his arousal.

‘Leo…’ The hand in his hair stuttered at the first panting passage of McCoy’s mouth over his balls, the wet trail of his tongue blindly climbing the length of his cock. He moaned at the heavy heat of him against his lips, scraped him lightly with his teeth to hear the shortness of Pike’s breath give way to a ragged groan.

‘I want you in my mouth.’ He opened his eyes, staring upward into Pike’s awestruck expression. ‘Now,’ he added firmly, refusing to beg but moaning all the same as an involuntary twitch of Pike’s hips nudged his cock against his cheek. McCoy craned his neck towards his prize, licking greedily at his silken flesh as Pike slipped a hand around the back of his head and guided himself into McCoy’s eager mouth. The angle was awkward, but perfectly balanced to the harsh contortions of the rest of his body to keep the toy sliding into him, the combination of both triggering an illicit thrill of being penetrated so completely, of pretending that a force other than his own hand was driving the cock in his ass.

The possibilities stirred by the idea – other hands, another cock – quaked hard through his body, throbbed heavily through his own neglected dick. The angle of his hips, canted upward to serve the demands of his toy, kept him from finding little more relief than the occasional brush of the rumpled blanket against the underside of his cock. Moaning softly around the weight of Pike’s flesh against his tongue, he slipped his free hand down beneath his tensed abdomen to touch himself, to grip tighter as his pleasure spiked at that first cautious brush of fingers. He thumbed the moisture beading at his slit, sucked Pike harder to disguise a wrenching groan but his divided attentions were too obvious to go unnoticed.

‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he scolded, reaching down to pull McCoy’s hand away from himself. ‘I don’t want you coming so soon,’ Pike warned, squeezing his wrist in a grip tight enough to make McCoy groan around him. ‘And you have two cocks that need your attention before I even think of letting you have a third…’

McCoy whined incoherently, breathing hard through his nose as his errant hand was dragged to the base of Pike’s dick instead, urging him to give more pleasure than what his mouth alone could provide. His body writhed into the unspoken command, legs spreading wider for the dildo until his groin pressed deeper into the bed. That blunt stimulation was enough to return his focus to his hands, his mouth as he fucked himself harder, took Pike at a better angle that grazed the back of his throat.

‘ _Yes…_ ’ Strong fingers tugged in his hair, clasped the back of his neck. ‘Good boy, take it all… yes, just like that…’

Pike began to thrust lightly into his mouth, taking the control that McCoy needed to surrender himself, to focus on aiming the dildo sharper, faster. Even better that the pumping of his hand also drove his hips into the bed, captured his cock in a delicious tangle of fabric that pulled achingly at his arousal, so close…

‘Fucking yourself full, and already craving more, aren’t you?’ A cruel tug at his hair, blunt nails scratching his back. ‘You are, I can tell… greedy little cockslut…’

The collision of Pike’s taunting words and sex-soaked taste on his tongue, the pain of fingernails and the pleasure of that toy slamming his prostate – nothing could have prevented McCoy from coming apart at that impact with a cry nearly choked by Pike’s cock as his own exploded wetly into the sheets. His body shuddered and seized through his orgasm, mindlessly humping the bed until Pike took hold of him, flipped him none too gently onto his back – cock still twitching against his belly, dildo still deeply lodged in his ass. His weak sprawl across the narrow bed left Pike with nowhere to go but on top, sliding down his sweating, quivering body and claiming the space between his thighs. Teeth scraped hard over his collarbone before Pike raised his head, fixed him with a hardened squint.

‘I told you not to come.’ Rough hands shoved their way between his legs, forcing him wider. McCoy gasped, back arching as the dildo was ruthlessly snatched away.

‘It’s your own damn fault,’ he panted, thrumming with too much pleasure to allow even a hint of remorse. He didn’t resist as his legs were forced to bend back, merely purring his satisfaction as Pike swiftly filled him to the hilt.

‘You’ll need to be punished,’ Pike warned breathlessly, fingers bruising his aching thighs as he set a harsh, relentless pace. ‘For disobeying my orders…’

‘Yes, Captain.’ Already sated, McCoy grinned in near-delirious pleasure at Pike’s bestial, rumbling groan. ‘Tell me,’ he goaded softly. ‘Tell me what you’re going to do…’

A fleeting, filthy grin twitched across his parted lips. ‘I should take away your favourite toy there,’ he growled, narrowed eyes glowing and rapt. ‘Make you crawl to me and beg to have it back like the needy slut you are.’

Pike’s next thrust punched a breathless bark of a laugh from his lungs. ‘You think if you had me on my knees I’d be begging for that old thing?’ McCoy clenched tighter around the hot, lively cock buried inside him, writhing up against him as Pike twitched and faltered, eyelashes shivering with distracted ecstasy. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, darling,’ he drawled, his teasing tone breaking on a moan as Pike recovered full feral command with a snap of his hips and the hot flash of wide open eyes. He caught McCoy’s idle hands in a bruising grip, pinned them hard together above his head with the full weight of his body.

‘Shameless, dirty thing…’ His grip on McCoy’s wrists tightened to one forceful hand as the other drifted down his flexed arm and shoulder, pressed lightly against his throat. ‘Want to know what I’ll do with you?’ he hushed as his fingers tightened, taunted the very breath of him. ‘Think I’ll tie you up once I’m done with you, maybe shove that toy back up your ass for good measure...’

McCoy hummed eagerly, drew his leg up around Pike’s waist to pull him in harder, closer. ‘I like where this is going,’ he smirked.

‘You would.’ Pike leaned down upon him, close enough to brush his lips in a distant mockery of a kiss. ‘Let’s see how you like it once I walk out and leave you like that… helpless and used, dripping all over with come for Kirk to find when he gets back…’

‘Fuck, Chris…’ His eyes widened, breath catching at the very thought, at the heightened arousal suffusing Pike’s face and speeding his thrusts.

‘Let him see what I’ve done to you…’ Sharp teeth caught McCoy’s gasping mouth, stifling Pike’s ragged groan as his hips snapped home with the force of his orgasm. The fingers snaring his wrists and throat tightened convulsively, possessively, then eased their hold as Pike relaxed into him. McCoy tipped his head back as Pike nuzzled into his throat, his hands now free to drift down to embrace the slowing shudders of his release.

‘Fuck, darling…’ He pawed the sweating length of Pike’s back, drinking in the power bleeding from taut muscle. ‘I can’t believe we did that in this stupid bunk.’

‘I can’t believe we didn’t do this sooner.’ His sex-rough voice rasped over McCoy’s neck, followed by a suckling kiss, the playful tug of teeth at his ear. ‘I’ll have to break into your quarters more often.’

McCoy squirmed through the aftershocks that pulsed through him as Pike pushed upright with an animal arc of his back that shifted the weight of his softening cock inside his body. A faint, exhausted smile quirked his expressive mouth at McCoy’s throaty hum; he gave his thigh an appreciative squeeze, hips rolling into him for one last tease before Pike slipped reluctantly away. Still too physically drained to move, McCoy watched from his languorous sprawl in the sheets as Pike rose smoothly to his feet with an addictive roll of honed muscle beneath slicked skin.

‘Well, congratulations,’ he drawled, only a little sarcastic as he stretched his aching limbs and rolled his neck. ‘Now I won’t be able to sleep in my own goddamn bed without getting a hard-on.’

‘You mean you could before?’

‘Damn it, Chris, I’m not a teenager.’ He rolled his eyes and craned his head, brow furrowing as Pike stepped carefully through the scattering of clothing on the floor: his jeans and Pike’s discarded suit tangling with Jim’s sweat-musked t-shirts.

‘Not too bad,’ Pike remarked as he shook out his jacket and gave it a piercing examination. ‘I was worried it might get wrinkled after all that.’

‘And why the hell were you dressed like that in the first place?’ Pushing up on his elbows, McCoy took in a slower eyeful of the scenery while it lasted. ‘Not like you need to get gussied up to talk me into bed.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ A filthy smirk tilted his way as Pike bent to retrieve his trousers. ‘But I do need to dress right to take my southern gentleman out to dinner.’

McCoy frowned. ‘Dinner?’

‘That’s right, which means you’ll need to get dressed as well, much as I’ll miss the view.’ His last garment draped safely over McCoy’s desk chair, Pike crawled over him again and planted an open-mouthed kiss on his hipbone. ‘The grey suit, maybe?’

‘Awfully formal, isn’t it?’ Even as he doubted, McCoy slipped his fingers into Pike’s fine curling hair, encouraging the slide of his lips over his come-spattered skin. ‘Where the hell are we going?’

‘That would ruin the surprise, beautiful.’ The distracting affections of Pike’s mouth ended with a reproachful scrape of teeth and a last perfunctory kiss. ‘Mind if I take the head first?’

McCoy grunted and waved an expansive hand to cover the leap of anxiety that caught his heart unawares. In his rational mind if nowhere else, he knew Pike was smart enough to leave no trace of his presence in the bathroom for Jim to find later: certainly more mindful than he was being, McCoy reflected with a start as he deeply inhaled the lingering musk of sex in the air. He let out a weary groan as he forced himself out of bed and took the ruined sheets with him, shoving the evidence into the laundry reclamation hatch and fetching clean bedding from the adjacent cupboard. He cast a critical eye over the blank mattress before snapping out fresh sheets, remaking the bed with the taut efficiency of too many hospital internships at which he had refused to be less than fully useful. As he knelt to fetch his pillow from the floor, McCoy wondered if this flawlessly made bed would be just as suspicious as leaving his sheets debauched, a nagging worry that snapped itself short with the hiss of the bathroom door and the arresting sight of his Chris, naked and freshly washed, towel already bundled up for disposal, frozen in the doorway. McCoy stared him down and up, cleared his throat and glanced back at the pillow in his hand.

‘Was just…’ he waved the pillow, bent to tuck it back into place beneath the uppermost blanket. ‘Tidying up,’ he finished unnecessarily. He briskly smoothed out the blanket again, then choked on a gasp of surprise at the unexpected press of a hard, naked body against his back, the restless roving of hands over his heaving ribcage.

‘You’d better get dressed,’ Pike growled, lips brushing hot against the back of his neck, his every word contradicting the nudge of his hips against McCoy’s ass. With a soft groan, he planted a knee against the bed to bear their joined weight, ruining the freshly made bed as he arched invitingly backward.

‘And why would I do a silly thing like that?’

Pike’s caresses hardened to a bruising grip, had him pinned facedown on the bed before he could brace himself. ‘Because,’ he hushed, rasping against his ear, ‘you look so hot like this… naked, cleaning up our mess like a good little boy… I could fuck you all over again. And that,’ he added softly, fingers tightening at the back of his neck as McCoy whined softly with raw need, ‘would not only make us late for dinner, but keep us here so long that Kirk might walk in on us while I’m still pounding you through your bed.’

A shiver of arousal quaked through his body; McCoy stifled a groan against the back of his hand as Pike’s tongue slicked a rough stripe up the side of his face.

‘Get dressed,’ he repeated tightly as he pushed away from McCoy’s shuddering body. ‘I’ll meet you outside when you’re ready.’

McCoy rolled reluctantly onto his back, disappointment throbbing thick through his veins as Pike pulled on his clothes, even if there was still something pleasing in the efficient grace with which he dressed himself. The decision to meet him outside the building was painfully transparent – he could only imagine the rumours that would be stirred if any cadets spotted them leaving his quarters together, especially with Pike dressed like _that_ , goddamn. ‘You’re sure about the grey suit?’ he asked instead, sitting upright as his arousal ebbed downward.

‘Positive.’ Pike’s nimble fingers adjusted the lines of his jacket’s cuffs and lapels as he sauntered forward again, nudging a clothed knee between McCoy’s naked thighs before leaning down to steal a slow, sultry kiss. ‘You look almost as incredible in that suit as you do right now,’ he murmured, tracing his thumb over McCoy’s slack lower lip as his eye drifted downward. ‘I’ll leave you to it, beautiful.’

The door closed behind Pike, leaving behind equal measures of regret and anticipation as McCoy mustered the strength to stand. He stretched again, turning to survey the bed with one last critical sweep. That last brush with temptation had rumpled the sheets – blunting the too-perfect finish of the bed, though not enough to advertise.

With a soft smile, he swept the last of the evidence into his bedside drawer and sauntered into the head. Perhaps Pike deserved the grey suit tonight after all.

\+ + +

If anything, the grey suit made him feel woefully underdressed.

Dinner had taken them to a private mezzanine room in an intimate restaurant where the table linens were militarily crisp and the golden light wove decadence into the faintest curl of Pike’s hair. Everything about this secluded place flattered his lover, kept drawing McCoy’s eye no matter the perfection of his seared bay scallops and the medium-rare steak au poivre that followed. By the time he had savoured the last bite of an exceptional key lime pie, McCoy was unwinding into the relaxation of a full belly, mutely content to appreciate the faint music echoing up from the restaurant’s main level, the deft tripping of Pike’s elegant fingertips over the snowy surface of their cleared tablecloth.

‘So I had a chat with Dr. Berhe yesterday,’ Pike said, a watchful eye flicking upward as the waiter quietly deposited a bourbon and a brandy at their table and just as discretely withdrew. ‘You know him?’

‘Only by reputation.’ McCoy drew his drink closer, warming the glass between his clasped hands.

‘He could say the same about you, and then some.’ He raised his brandy to his lips, took that measured first sip that always softened the lines around his eyes, except for now. ‘You heard about this new project he’s setting up in Paris?’

‘Who hasn’t?’ A purely intellectual shiver slipped across his tongue along with his bourbon at the very thought: a state of the art neurological research node at Starfleet’s Sarbonne facility, populated by the sharpest minds in intergalactic medicine. He had avidly devoured the early developments in Dr. Berhe’s team through the medical journals, barely able to fathom the possibilities to come of bringing all those experts together in the same room.

‘Well, most of us outside your field don’t have much of a clue,’ Pike admitted wryly as he lowered his drink to the table. ‘Myself included, until Berhe started going on about having you on his team once you graduate.’

‘What?’ McCoy nearly choked on his bourbon. ‘Me? Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely sure,’ he confirmed levelly. ‘And don’t look so surprised, you don’t get to be top of the medical track without attracting some prime offers.’

‘Dr. Berhe hasn’t offered _me_ anything yet,’ McCoy muttered, even as the warmth of rare pride expanded through his chest. Despite all the doubts he harboured in himself, he never questioned his skill as a doctor but something flat in Pike’s voice held the flattery at bay. ‘So what’s this really about, Chris?’

‘What do you mean?’

McCoy squinted suspiciously at Pike’s evasive tone, the dull slate of his eyes. ‘Don’t bullshit me,’ he sighed. ‘What, you think I’m going to swan off to Paris just because Berhe dangles a few ganglions in my direction?’

‘That better not be something dirty,’ Pike muttered, the hint of a frown finally showing itself at the corner of his mouth.

‘Because I’m not.’ He leaned over their table, trying to catch Pike’s averted gaze. ‘Chris, I thought you wanted me on your ship. Why else do you think I’m subjecting myself to all this Starfleet training? Warp field theory, navigation, downright _terrifying_ survival seminars…’

‘But not flight.’ The swift return of Pike’s eyes locking upon him was startling, snapping McCoy into silence. ‘As Dr. Berhe so kindly reminded me, no doctor can serve as senior medical officer on a starship without their basic shuttle pilot qualification. Which, as he clearly noticed but I didn’t, you haven’t taken yet.’

A panic that had nothing to do with survival seminars chilled McCoy’s gut, froze him in his chair, the bourbon forgotten on the table. Hands that had started to coax across the tablecloth to reassure his Chris withdrew into his lap as sweat began to prickle his palms.

‘Of course,’ Pike added, bowing his head over his drink as McCoy chewed anxiously at the inside of his lip, ‘if you prefer a ground assignment, there’s no need for you to get your qualification at all.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ he protested, brow furrowing. Impulses scurried across every reptile nerve in his brain, faster than he could arrange into sense.

‘I wouldn’t hold it against you if you did,’ he continued, forcibly ignoring McCoy’s words. ‘That’s how it often goes in Starfleet. Even with the best planning in the world, anything can happen. There was never a guarantee that we would serve together...’

‘But it’s a hell of a lot more likely to happen if I put in for the Enterprise,’ McCoy said firmly. ‘Which is exactly what I’m going to do, even if it means throwing myself into a shuttle and learning to fly that god-awful death trap. So enough of this crap, Chris.’

Pike looked up from the table, his eyes unreadable in the candlelight. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked softly, doubt still flickering at the corner of his mouth. Impulsively, McCoy reached across the table to take Pike’s hand.

‘Of all the things I’d do for you, learning to fly a shuttle should be the least of them. And you damn well didn’t need to splash out on a fancy restaurant to talk me into it, you smooth bastard.’ He forced a brave smile, squeezed Pike’s fingers tighter as he ducked his head with a strange twist to his mouth, somewhere between a grin and a grimace.

‘Your hand is sweating,’ he remarked quietly, and McCoy snatched his hand away with a scowl, reaching instead for his bourbon. An immoderate mouthful drowned the worst of his anxiety, returned a bantering calm to his voice.

‘You could teach me, couldn’t you?’ he asked speculatively. ‘We managed well enough with my arms training.’

Pike rolled his eyes, already looking more like his usual self in the wake of McCoy’s fervent promise. ‘Sure we did. First off, you didn’t need remedial training at all. You only dragged me out to the range to indulge whatever horny fantasy you had around me and phasers.’

He cleared his throat, took a sip of his bourbon. ‘Thought you might be able to help refine my technique,’ he murmured, casting a coy glance at Pike over the rim of his glass and enjoying the distracted heat clouding his eyes.

‘Hardly, you were a damned natural,’ he shot back, a hint of arousal roughening his voice. ‘No doctor should have such deadly aim.’

‘Think you’ll find a doctor needs to have pretty damn good aim, actually,’ McCoy pointed out, warming to the memory of rough fingers at his wrist, steel gouging skin, hard bodies grinding greedily in the furtive dark of the phaser range. ‘And you sure weren’t complaining about my accuracy at the time.’

‘Far from it… but as I was saying,’ he went on forcibly, shaking himself back into the present, ‘that wasn’t training. And anyone can book private time on the arms range without drawing attention. Training shuttles are another matter entirely. Those are monitored very closely, and for good reason.’

Pike paused, a slight frown settling between his eyebrows as he stared at the tablecloth.

‘Chris?’

‘I could teach you to fly,’ he murmured, eyes still fixed downward. ‘I could make the arrangements. But you’re not one of my advisees, not even in the same branch… it would be highly irregular, enough to draw no small amount of attention...’

McCoy understood now: not only the risk but also Pike’s reluctance to point it out. This wasn’t the first time they had stumbled to this uncomfortable place where their unspoken need to conceal bumped up against a moment when honesty would be so much easier. Maybe, with his lover as his teacher, he could find some shred of enjoyment in what would no doubt be a terrifying ordeal.

Only it wasn’t that simple. Most likely, it would start and end with whispers and looks but those alone were damning enough. Back home, it had taken far less to start the vicious circle of condemnation that had flung him onto this path in the first place.

‘Probably best you don’t, then,’ he decided, in what he hoped was an indifferent tone. A flicker of emotion crossed his Chris’ face, and it could have been relief or regret or both but it was gone too soon to say. ‘Which means I still have a problem.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Pike mused. ‘There’s that roommate of yours.’

His eyes widened. ‘Jim?’

‘Kirk is a spectacularly talented pilot,’ Pike said firmly, ‘and what’s worse, he knows it too so don’t ever tell him I said that. He could qualify for Nova Squadron next term if he wants it.’ A faint smile warmed Pike’s features in the candlelight, something stronger than professional pride. ‘He may not excel at picking up his socks, but Kirk could teach you to fly. I’m sure of it.’

McCoy frowned into his drink, swiftly repressing his first instinct to snap a doubting something about Jim’s age – utterly pointless when Starfleet was overrun with infants anyway. ‘He’s busy,’ he attempted instead. ‘That accelerated track of his… he’s always in classes, special training… he doesn’t have time for my shit…’

‘I have a feeling he’d make time for you, if you asked.’ Pike tilted his head, casting half his face in dim shadow. ‘Kirk is popular among his classmates, but there’s only one person who keeps coming up during our advisory sessions. Care to guess who that might be?’

A heat unrelated to the bourbon crept up his neck, made McCoy shift in his chair. ‘Kid latched on like a duckling from day one,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘Can’t imagine why.’

‘I have a theory or two,’ Pike replied dryly. ‘But I know explaining it would just make you blush,’ he added with a smirk as McCoy scowled uncomfortably. ‘I’d be happy to demonstrate once you’ve finished your drink.’

Pike’s hand crept across the table to brush along his fingers, suggestive and slow, fit to deepen the flush heating his skin. ‘You seriously think Jim won’t be back in our room by now?’

‘Of course he might be,’ Pike allowed. ‘But that’s where my bed comes in.’

‘It is a mighty comfy bed,’ he acknowledged softly, letting his fingers fall open and inviting beneath Pike’s touch. He met his lover’s stare plainly, more direct than he would normally dare in a public place such as this. ‘Shall we?’

As they descended the stairs, McCoy let his eye wander over the terrace beyond the restaurant’s waterside seating where some half dozen couples danced casually to a slow, modern tune drawn out by a piano and cello. There was nothing ostentatious in it, a far cry from the lavish galas Jocelyn used to drag him to, which made the sight all the more appealing.

‘Chris,’ he murmured as they drew nearer the foot of the stairs, slowing his step with a hand on his shoulder. Pike stilled below him, turned back around with a questioning quirk of his eyebrow, curious but anticipating nothing. That alone was a pleasure: to catch his lover in suspense before he passed him on the stair and caught his hand.

‘May I have this dance, darling?’

Pike’s eyes widened, his surprise plain before a slow, eager smile crept across his expressive mouth. ‘I suppose,’ he decided as he followed McCoy onto the terrace, ‘if you happen to be asking…’

‘I am.’ His hand found its home at the small of Pike’s back to draw him closer as he attuned their bodies to the soothing tempo of the dance playing out around them. Without any complicated ritual to trouble his feet, McCoy led them into a simple waltz, almost lazy in its execution, all the better to savour this rare public intimacy with his strikingly handsome man on his arm, to feel his power soften along his spine and the breathtaking bow of his head against McCoy’s shoulder.

‘Leading, too,’ he remarked, an amused hush against his neck. ‘You’re full of surprises tonight.’

‘I’ll keep leading the rest of the night if that’s what you want.’ McCoy let his hand drift past Pike’s waist for a discrete grope, smiled softly to himself as Pike hummed in agreement, a low vibration deep in his chest. ‘I’d do anything to please you… you know that, don’t you?’

The silken ease of Pike’s body slowed a barely perceptible beat. ‘I do, yes,’ he agreed quietly, hesitantly. ‘But I would never want my happiness to come at the expense of yours. You know that too, right?’ The weight of his head on McCoy’s shoulder lifted slightly, chipped away at the tentative peace that had started to warm its way through his body. ‘If I’ve ever made you…’

‘Shh, I know.’ He slid his hand up from Pike’s back, pushing his fingers into his hair in a silent plea to leave the moment unbroken. ‘I know,’ he repeated emphatically, staring unseeingly past Pike’s shoulder and willing the words to ring true.

He had no choice but to make them true.


	2. Chapter 2

‘Jim.’

His call caught the kid’s attention immediately, blue eyes flashing upward as a bright grin broke out across his face. ‘Bones!’ A hint of a jog sped his steps as he crossed the hangar with barely a glance back at his classmates. ‘Don’t usually see you down here,’ he remarked, laying a hearty slap on McCoy’s arm that could have knocked him over if his stance wasn’t so stiffly wary. 

‘Yeah, well…’ His eye flicked towards the line of training shuttles as he bit down hard on the inside of his lip.

‘Got time for a drink?’ Jim tugged down the zip on his flight suit, revealing a thin t-shirt clinging with sweat to his skin. ‘I could really go for a beer.’

‘Beer. Yeah.’ McCoy snapped his gaze away with a sharp nod. ‘Yeah, beer is good.’

He cursed himself as they abandoned the hangar for the locker room where Jim swapped his flight suit for jeans and a fresh t-shirt before grabbing his jacket and leading them off campus to the nearest bar. Every step they took further away from the Academy and its shuttles deepened the guilt and determination simmering in his gut, though he held his silence right up until they sat at a table with two cold pints between them.

‘I need to learn to fly,’ McCoy blurted out before he touched his drink, warily watchful as Jim nearly choked on his first sip of beer. 

‘You _what?_ ’ Eyes wide, Jim wiped an endearing smear of foam from his upper lip. ‘Fly what?’

‘Well, not kites, obviously,’ he drawled, arms folding defensively across his chest. ‘Level one shuttle pilot qualification. I don’t have mine yet, and I need it.’

‘You want your level one?’ A confused frown furrowed Jim’s heavy brows. ‘But… you’re afraid of flying.’

‘Don’t remind me, kid.’ The beer was suddenly looking very damn good. McCoy wrapped his hand around the slippery glass, took a bracing drink. ‘No helping it, is there? You said it yourself, Starfleet operates in space.’

‘Not entirely, though.’ Jim tilted back in his chair. ‘Plenty of ground assignments to go around, always are. I thought…’

‘Maybe I changed my mind.’ McCoy hunched over his pint, brooding on the implications before daring to continue. ‘I want to put in for the Enterprise,’ he admitted in a low mutter. 

‘The _Enterprise_?’ That charged something in Jim’s lazy slouch; he sat up alert as a gun dog, eyes indecently bright. ‘Wow, I... wow, _really_?’

‘And why is that so damned surprising?’ Pike’s premature promises of having him on his ship had been a constant feature of his life at Starfleet so far, but Jim’s stunned reaction fed greedily on the self-doubt that was a near constant of his heart. He fully intended to earn his place on the Enterprise, but if Jim didn’t think...

‘What? No… shit, Bones...’ A bright smile exploded across his face. ‘You’re the best doctor in our year, everyone knows that. Hell, if anything you’re gonna disappoint a bunch of your classmates, they didn’t realize they’d be up against you for that post.’

‘Well…’ He cleared his throat and took another sip of his beer, hoping to cool the heat rising in his face. ‘I won’t be in anyone’s way if I don’t get my flight qualification.’

‘Then what’re we waiting for?’ Jim swept up his pint glass, took several hearty swallows as McCoy gaped dumbly. ‘If we hurry back now, we can grab one of the shuttles before Ravinder signs off. He owes me one.’

‘What, _now_?’ A queasy flutter of panic squirmed in his gut as Jim took another hasty swig of his pint. ‘Damn it, Jim, we’ve been drinking…’

‘We haven’t even had one yet.’ But Jim pushed his glass away. ‘C’mon, no time like the present, right?’

Jim shoved his chair away from the table so quickly that McCoy had no time to do anything but what came by instinct alone, which told him to down as much of his beer as he could before chasing Jim out the door and hope to hell they weren’t running into something he might regret.

Not for the first time where Jim was concerned, that instinct was nothing but trouble.

 

‘Okay, easy there...’ Jim’s hand, barely there, hovered above his heaving shoulder. ‘Too much, too soon?’

McCoy sucked in a wretched breath, groaned and clapped his hand over his mouth as he stared bleakly at the puddle of former beer on the deck in abject, mortified misery.

‘He’ll have to clean that up, you know.’ The droning voice was a distant echo somewhere far behind McCoy’s huddled body. He cringed deeper into the corner, wincing as Jim’s fingers tightened on his shoulder.

‘It’ll get taken care of so move along, alright?’ Jim’s tone was brittle, probably insubordinate if that voice was attached to anyone other than a fellow cadet. ‘Asshole,’ he muttered as boot heels echoed away on the deck plates.

‘I’ll do it,’ McCoy mumbled, eyes squeezing shut as he willed his stomach to calm. ‘Just… need a second…’

‘Like hell you will.’ A note of anger still heated Jim’s voice, made McCoy flinch even as his hands settled gingerly at his shoulder and waist. ‘There’s a bench over there,’ he said, already kinder. ‘Think you can make it over there without getting sick again? Course you can, come on… up you get…’

Mouth clamped stubbornly shut against a lingering wave of nausea, McCoy shuffled beneath Jim’s slow nudges and dropped wearily onto a hard seat. A water bottle found its way into his numb hands, hanging in his dull grasp as passing footsteps and low murmurs washed over his drooping head. The skin-prickling, gorge-raising urge to vomit was fading now, replaced by a vague chill in his bones crackling beneath his burning embarrassment as the white noise in his ears gave way to the scattered voices passing distantly over him. He heard a low hush, a scathing laugh that made him curl into a quieter hunch, kept him staring at his unclean boots until another pair of feet shuffled into his narrow view and a warm body sat next to him, close enough to brush thigh to thigh.

‘Better?’ A hand moved in light circles between his shoulder blades, and while human contact usually shoved his vertigo onto a more precarious edge, there was something slower, more soothing in Jim’s touch that made it easier to tolerate. Teeth firmly set, he took the water bottle in a steadier grip and raised his other hand to his face, trying too late to hide any further show of weakness.

‘What the hell was that?’ he rasped out, fingers kneading at the nausea trapped behind his forehead. Jim shifted uneasily at his side, cleared his throat.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought, maybe if I showed you some of the scary stuff right away, you’d see how safe it is…?’

He trailed off weakly, as though recognizing just how idiotic his explanation sounded. An awkward silence thickened around them, uncomfortable with the lingering whiff of sick.

‘That was a terrible idea,’ McCoy spat. 

‘Yeah.’ 

‘You nearly crashed us into the _moon_.’

‘I _avoided_ a crash-landing on the moon,’ he corrected, without much conviction. Jim’s boot nudged the deck next to McCoy’s foot. ‘We can, um, go slower next time. Provided you still want to…?’

McCoy dropped his hand from his face and glanced warily aside at Jim’s sheepish yet hopeful expression. Those eyes would be the death of him. ‘Still need my qualification, don’t I?’ he grumbled. 

‘Yeah, but if I’m not helping…’

‘Can’t think of anyone who’d have a better shot at helping.’ The lie tripped easily off his tongue, and was almost worth it for the relief that flooded Jim’s face.

‘So you’ll give me another shot at it?’

‘Not this very second,’ he warned sharply. ‘Come on, let’s get that cleaned up,’ he gestured at the puddle in the corner, ‘then you can buy me a drink.’

‘You want a drink after all that?’

‘Bourbon settles my stomach.’

The bourbon did do wonders for McCoy’s nerves; it probably helped that Jim didn’t hesitate to order from the bar’s top shelf, probably out of lingering guilt. Over their drinks, they pulled up their respective schedules – his complicated by clinic rotations, Jim’s by more extracurriculars than seemed decent – and found another half-dozen days in the coming weeks to meet for training. As they entered the times into their PADDs, McCoy couldn’t help but notice the scarce empty blocks in Jim’s schedule fill with colour and noise until there was little else left. 

‘Are you sure you have the time…?’ 

‘Positive.’ Jim slapped his PADD face down on the table. ‘We’re gonna take it slow from now on, okay? Which means we need to fit in as much practice as we can between now and your test.’

McCoy frowned. ‘When’s my test?’ he asked blankly. ‘I don’t have one booked yet.’

‘You’ll need your level one on record by end of this term,’ Jim said with a shrug, as if term’s end wasn’t less than two months away. ‘Command starts formal reviews of assignments after that so if you want Captain Pike to consider you for his crew…’

‘Then we can’t go all that slow after all.’ 

‘We’ll take as much time as you need, Bones. Promise.’

While Jim’s PADD was hidden from view, McCoy’s schedule was still glowing beneath his hand. He traced a finger over the shallow squares of his time – not only that marked by classes and clinic shifts but time he would never dare confide in a Starfleet computer, never acted upon unless by chance and coincidence.

‘What sort of hours does the practice fleet keep?’ he asked quietly, eyes still fixed on his PADD.

‘Any hours we like.’

McCoy arched a skeptical eyebrow. ‘Seriously?’

‘Well…’ Jim waved an indifferent hand. ‘I can keep Ravinder on side for a few more favours and failing that, I bet I could talk Captain Pike into letting me take a training shuttle off the supervised rota. He likes me,’ he added with a sly wink that fell like a guillotine across McCoy’s heartstrings. He aimed his scowl at his schedule instead but damned if the prospect of giving up those precious few late evenings didn’t darken his already soured mood.

‘So…’ He didn’t dare suggest it aloud; he pressed his free hand to his mouth as he nudged his PADD closer to Jim, watching as those clever eyes flicked over his schedule and widened with understanding.

‘Late night shuttle training, Bones?’ Jim lifted his gaze with a suggestive smirk. ‘Just you, me and the stars?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped, glaring down into his bourbon. ‘Forget it,’ he decided quickly, slapping his hand down on his PADD and dragging it back towards him. ‘This is a stupid enough idea already…’

‘No, no, wait…’ Jim had already turned his own PADD back over, was tracing his fingers over his calendar with growing excitement. ‘No, hold on, if we can add a few extra sessions in here… I’ll cancel with her, no big deal…’

‘Her?’ McCoy squinted disbelievingly at Jim. ‘You’re not…’

‘It’s nothing,’ Jim interrupted, already rearranging his schedule with a furious dance of fingertips. ‘You’re prettier anyway,’ he added with another wink.

‘And you’re full of shit.’ He hid an involuntarily bashful grin behind another sip of his bourbon. Truth was, Jim’s enthusiasm for this impossible task was as flattering as it was startling. Their friendship since that shuttle ride had been one of the most reliable he had ever known, no doubt because it had been uncomplicated by demands or favours beyond take-out noodles here, a hangover hypo there. McCoy had never dared ask for more than what a kid like Jim would be willing to give, but as he watched the younger man cheerfully unmake his life, he realized that Pike likely had the better measure of Jim’s loyalty.

 _Chris._ Just remembering their conversation, the restaurant and the intense yet languid sex that had followed in Pike’s bed stirred an ache in his chest. The smile he offered Jim as he took his PADD back was no doubt curdled with uncountable opportunities lost, to say nothing of the awkwardness to come of explaining this frustrating turn of events to Pike. 

Maybe no explanation would be needed, at least not anytime soon. Heavens knew Pike could go weeks without contacting him at all; his own busy schedule was nothing to the countless demands Starfleet placed on a celebrated Captain and the Academy’s Commandant. As much as he resented those long silences between meetings, McCoy hoped that just this once, they might work to his advantage.

Then again, his luck had never been that good. Only took three lousy days, McCoy mused moodily as he stared at his comm for a long, reluctant moment before answering. 

‘Captain.’

 _‘Cadet.’_ Contrary to the anxiety catching McCoy’s tongue, Pike’s tone was easy as a breeze. _‘Is that how we’re playing it today?’_

‘Can’t go disrespecting the Academy Commandant, now can I?’ Despite himself, a hint of a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘This is some sort of student satisfaction call, right?’

 _‘Could be,’_ Pike murmured, and McCoy could practically taste the swagger in his voice, the silken confidence stirring his blood. _‘Are you finding yourself unsatisfied?’_

‘Nothing new there, darling.’ His reply slipped out involuntarily, responding to Pike’s playful invitation before common sense could cut him short.

 _‘Then maybe I should do something about that.’_ As ever, the rich, rasping cadence of Pike’s voice was nearly his undoing. _‘Tonight?’_

‘Can’t.’ McCoy pressed his lips thin, swallowed a sigh. ‘Jim wants to fit in flight training after his xenolinguistics club.’

 _‘Ah.’_ There was an unreadable pause after the soft breath of his acknowledgement, then, _‘Should’ve known that’s why he wanted the off-hours access.’_

‘Any chance you want to take it back?’ he asked hopefully.

 _‘Of course not,’_ Pike scoffed. _‘It’s all for a good cause. Best cause I can think of.’_

‘Glad you think so,’ he said, though he failed to inject anything agreeable into his reply. McCoy hesitated before he went on. ‘He’s really eager to use every bit of spare time we can find between now and my test. Doesn’t leave a whole lot left for… you know…’

 _‘I understand.’_ Pike even said it like he meant it; McCoy forced his shoulders to relax a marginal degree. _‘It’s only a few weeks, we’ll make it work.’_

‘I guess you’re right,’ he sighed, trying to absorb some of Pike’s easy confidence through the comm link. 

_‘Of course I am. Oh, and Leo?’_

‘Mmn?’

_‘Try not to wear out that toy of yours in the meantime.’_

Indignation, frustration, even a twisted sort of amusement rushed through him all at once, , but only one reaction burst from his mouth. ‘Go fuck yourself, Chris,’ he groaned.

A warm laugh burst from his comm. _‘I’ll have to now, won’t I?’_

‘Too damn right.’ A reluctant grin broke across his face. ‘See you as soon as I can, darling,’ he added quietly. ‘Hang in there.’

_‘You too, beautiful. Pike out.’_

McCoy slumped over his desk as he snapped his comm shut and shoved it aside. That conversation hadn’t been nearly as hard as, say, climbing behind the controls of a shuttle but he knew full well that talking about weeks of deprivation was nothing to enduring the thing itself. He would try, as far as Jim’s insane training regiment would allow, but he already grimly suspected he would not see his Chris in any improper sense until he earned himself that level one qualification. 

If that wasn’t motivation enough, he didn’t know what else would do the job.

The hiss of the door sliced at McCoy’s ear, straightened him in his chair as he spun about face. ‘Back already?’ 

Jim paused midway through stripping off his jacket, leather tangled at his elbows. ‘It’s past 2000 hours,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought you were about to ream me out for being late.’

‘It can’t be…’ He glanced at the chronometer by his bed, flinched inwardly to see Jim was right. Shit. How long had he been staring at the untouched coursework on his desk like a damned fool? He had gotten even less work done tonight than he had this time last week when Chris… he shook that distraction away, forced himself to his feet. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Must’ve lost track of time.’

‘Wish I’d known,’ Jim huffed as he threw his jacket towards his bed and peeled off his t-shirt. ‘Another ten minutes and I bet I could’ve scored Uhura’s first name.’

‘In your dreams, kid.’ He snorted as he looked pointedly away from the compact muscle of Jim’s bare back; Nyota’s stubborn streak wasn’t to be taken lightly, especially in the face of Jim’s persistent nagging. ‘Not too late if you want another go at it,’ he added as an afterthought, eye drifting back to his abandoned comm on the desk. ‘I’ve got an awful lot of studying to do, so I was thinking maybe…’

‘Maybe nothing, Bones.’ Jim yanked a rumpled flight suit from his wardrobe, gave it a testing sniff before shrugging and shaking it out. ‘You have a hot date with a shuttle tonight, and we both know you’ll ace whatever test you have coming up. So quit stalling and get changed.’ 

‘Fine,’ he groaned. It had been a pathetic attempt anyway. ‘If it shuts you up, you bossy bastard.’

‘I’m command track, Bones,’ Jim said with a smirk as he tugged up the zip of his flight suit. ‘I’m supposed to be bossy.’ 

McCoy glowered moodily back, refusing to care that Jim seemingly had nothing better to do now than watch him get out of his uniform. ‘You’re no captain yet,’ he muttered as he undressed.

\+ + +

Late nights in space plus his usual long days on solid ground were clearly beginning to take their toll; McCoy was three strides into Dr. Boyce’s tiny office before noticing Christopher Pike waiting with a wry smile and two take-out cups of coffee.

‘Hope you don’t mind me interrupting you at work,’ he said, holding out one of the coffees. ‘You can blame Phil, it was half his idea.’

‘How could I mind when you bring me coffee?’ Now he realized that this beautiful vision wasn’t a hallucination, McCoy barely restrained himself from lunging too eagerly at the steaming cup and inhaling it in one go. ‘Have you been lurking in here very long?’ Apparently not, judging by the scalding heat of the coffee on his tongue. He groaned gratefully as the caffeine burned down his throat.

‘Not really.’ Pike perched on the edge of Boyce’s desk, his coffee resting at his side in one hand while the other traced lightly over McCoy’s hip. ‘So, do I get a thank you?’

McCoy grinned, leaning in to reward his Chris with a lingering kiss that no doubt tasted too strongly of coffee. He stepped in close between Pike’s parted legs, making up for his relatively chaste lips with a suggestive nudge of his hips that Pike stopped too soon with firm fingers at his waist.

‘Mmn, don’t tempt me.’ He nipped sharply at McCoy’s lower lip before drawing back. ‘I already promised Phil I wouldn’t do anything inappropriate to you on his desk.’

A half-chuckle, half-groan rolled from McCoy’s throat as he took a reluctant step back. ‘I guess it’s the least we can do to repay the favour,’ he sighed. The caution didn’t stop him from finding a stretch of desk at Pike’s side to claim for his own seat, just close enough to touch. ‘So what’s the occasion, darling?’

‘Missing you isn’t enough?’ Pike took a sip of his coffee as he glanced sidelong with a defiant eyebrow firmly arched to forestall the whisper of concern already curling in McCoy’s chest. Nothing in that eye or tone invited pity or apologies so he settled for leaning subtly closer until they were pressed more securely at the shoulder.

‘Miss you too,’ he admitted softly, letting Pike’s familiar scent fill him past the primal comfort of his coffee. ‘All the more reason why flying is shit.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘Slow.’ He took another sip of his coffee, shook his head. ‘Jim’s been sticking to the basics ever since I puked on his boots that first time out.’

‘You _what_?’

‘It was his own damn fault,’ McCoy snapped defensively. ‘You don’t teach a dog to fetch by setting fire to his tail.’

Pike snorted. ‘Don’t tell me he ran the fire simulator your first time out.’

McCoy froze, coffee halfway to his mouth. ‘There’s a fire simulator?’

‘Fire happens,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Don’t worry, they never last long. No oxygen in space, remember?’

‘How could I forget.’ With a shudder, he took another bracing mouthful of coffee. ‘Why worry about fire when I’ll suffocate instead of being burned to a crisp?’

‘You’re learning fast.’ Pike had the audacity to wink, the insane bastard. McCoy scowled, looked pointedly away.

‘Fucking fantastic.’ More coffee doused some of the panic curdling in his gut. ‘Remind me why I’m putting up with this shit?’

‘Besides the fact that I bring you coffee during your shift?’ An arm curled low around his waist as Pike leaned in to bring his lips to McCoy’s ear. ‘Clearly you’d do anything for an assignment that will keep you riding my cock.’ 

McCoy choked back a snort of laughter. ‘That must be it,’ he agreed with a smirk. He slipped his free hand into Pike’s lap, grinned as he felt a twitch of interest beneath his teasing fingers. With a low hum, he nudged the heel of his hand against the beginnings of Pike’s arousal, fondling familiarly until fingers seizing his wrist stopped him short.

‘I promised Phil…’

‘ _You_ promised. I sure as hell didn’t.’ But McCoy relented all the same with one last trailing fingertip’s worth of attention, just enough to draw a soft moan from Pike’s throat. ‘Later, darling.’ 

‘Now that would be nice,’ Pike admitted with a sigh, reaching for his coffee. ‘So when’s your next lesson?’

‘Later today,’ he said, already cringing at the thought of fire simulators. ‘Jim’s in class all afternoon but he’ll be done around the time I finish shift here.’

‘Class…’ Pike’s eye flicked to the chronometer over Boyce’s desk. ‘Shit, I need to get going. I’m covering for Momoru this week.’

‘What, already?’ His coffee was only half-finished; glancing down, he saw that Pike’s was barely touched. ‘You just got here.’

‘Don’t I know it.’ Pike rose to his feet, took one last swig of coffee before setting the mostly-full cup down on Boyce’s desk. ‘There. I brought you even more coffee.’

McCoy raised the last of his first cup in a mock toast. ‘Is that the only apology I get for having my break cut short?’

With a wicked smirk, Pike planted his hands on McCoy’s thighs, shoved his legs apart as he pushed in tight and stole his mouth in a rough obscenity of a kiss that split him open and left him gasping with want as Pike just as swiftly withdrew. 

‘I’ll make it up to you next time, beautiful.’ Pike’s thumbed his wet lower lip as he backed away. ‘Have a good lesson today.’

‘We’ll see,’ he said grudgingly. McCoy narrowed his eyes as he watched Pike slip out the office door, swirling the dregs of his coffee in its cup before draining it dry. Unlike his coffee, Pike’s would be unsweetened but he could fix that in the staff lounge. He took a moment to adjust the drape of his labcoat over his hospital scrubs before discarding his empty cup in Boyce’s reclamation unit and taking Pike’s coffee with him onto the ward.

He had only managed a scant dozen steps towards the nearest sugar supply when Dr. Boyce rounded the next corner, grey eyebrow arching as he spotted McCoy drawing nearer. 

‘I assume it’s safe to use my office now?’ he asked dryly.

‘Er, yeah.’ McCoy stumbled to an awkward pause, stared down at the coffee in his hands. ‘Um, thanks for that, that was–’

‘Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t.’ Despite his grave tone, Boyce’s eyes sparked with amusement. ‘So long as nothing happened to my desk.’

‘Nothing at all,’ he reassured swiftly, offering a grateful nod as they parted in their respective directions even if the truth of it did nothing to ease his mind. _Nothing at all,_ despite what McCoy had offered, had downright _craved_. Clearly, Pike was nowhere near that desperate.

No matter, he decided firmly as he drowned a waterfall of sugar in the bitterness of Pike’s leftover coffee. It meant nothing. Nothing at all.

\+ + +

The collar of McCoy’s flight suit was itching at his neck, clinging too close to his skin; he gave the dense cloth another irritated tug as his eye flicked to the chronometer above the locker room door. Bad enough that he had shown early for this lesson, but the waiting was far worse when Jim was obviously late and leaving him with little else but a lingering frustration in his heart and limbs to keep him occupied.

McCoy had nearly prowled a hole through the locker room floor by the time Jim finally rushed in, glowing and panting. He snatched his hands down to his sides, nostrils flaring as the musk of Jim’s sweat glanced off his sharpened nerves.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Combat training.’ Jim flashed a searing grin that only amplified the flush on his cheeks. ‘And Bones, I was _this close_ to taking down Pike. _So_ close.’

An electric charge shot up McCoy’s spine, chased swiftly down by a slip of ice that froze his heart. ‘Pike?’ he echoed dumbly.

‘Yeah.’ Jim stripped off his cadet reds, standing in spare boxer briefs as he rummaged a flight suit from his locker. ‘He’s been taking the advanced class this week while Rurikawa’s off-world and shit, he _knows things_ , you know? Like, real tactics from being out in the black and damn, he pulls some dirty moves like Rurikawa never does…’

McCoy swept an eye over him, twitched at the hint of an erection in Jim’s briefs. ‘That so,’ he muttered, arms crossing tight over his chest.

‘I almost had him too,’ Jim went on, noticing nothing of McCoy’s darkening mood as he bent to step into his flight suit. ‘But every time I was close to getting in there…’ A strange noise, maybe a sigh but more like a moan, echoed softly from Jim’s throat. ‘He ended up pinning me to the mats something like six times. He doesn’t look that strong but wow…’ He shook his head as he tugged his suit up over his hips with a suggestive wriggle. ‘I’d let him do that again _anytime._ ’

‘Course you would,’ he grumbled under his breath, or at least whatever breath was left in him. He could barely draw air into his lungs, not past the morbid fascination of what that must have looked like: his Chris, skilled limbs taut and tight upon Jim’s young body, hard and aggressive and... ‘Are you ready?’ he snapped after a long, uncomfortable silence. Jim was taking too damn long covering himself up.

‘You’re eager to fly all of a sudden.’ Jim turned about with a precocious grin that died as he met McCoy’s stare; he wasn’t sure how he looked in that moment but it clearly wasn’t good. ‘I’m ready when you are,’ he decided, far more somber as he gestured their way to the hangar deck.

McCoy got the hang of launching the shuttle three lessons ago, well enough that Jim insisted he take them into the upper stratosphere and establish orbit over Earth, which he managed with a numb, automatic efficiency that was utterly immune to Jim’s cheerful praise.

‘What’re we doing this time?’ he asked dully, eyes fixed on the bleak starfield beyond the viewscreen.

‘Evasive maneuvers.’ Jim chirped as bright as the controls beneath his fingers as he tapped in some obscure command that shivered the darkness before McCoy’s eyes into a simulated debris field. ‘You’ll need to use the sensors to read the distance between obstacles and enter course corrections to clear the field,’ he explained with an indifferent wave of his hand. ‘Standard exam stuff.’

‘Sure,’ he sighed under his breath. ‘At least it’s not fire day,’ he muttered under his breath as he briskly scrubbed his sweating hands on his thighs.

‘What?’

‘Never mind.’ He gave his clouded head a firm shake, glared hard at the clean, scientific coordinates gleaming at him from the console, far easier to digest than the expansive horror of space beyond the viewscreen. This was almost like lab work, he decided stubbornly as he calculated distances, plotted a course, and after taking a deep, steadying breath, gave the shuttle the slightest kick of quarter-impulse. He felt the engines throb to life beneath the deck plates, a whisper of vertigo that he rationally knew was entirely psychosomatic when – _if_ – the inertial dampeners were doing their job. Any sensation of queasy movement was a figment of his fear, nothing but…

A loud, metallic thump rattled the cabin and _fuck_ , he felt that for sure, felt the whole goddamn shuttle lurch sideways in the unforgiving vacuum of space. ‘Shit,’ he gasped, hunching down and clinging to the console in white-knuckled panic.

‘You need to _watch_ , Bones.’ Somewhere beyond the static roar of terror filling his ears, Jim sounded so calm, almost indifferent. ‘All that debris is in constant motion, so you need to keep an eye on the field and make adjustments manually as you pass through.’

‘And how the hell am I supposed to watch the debris field and the controls at the same time?’ he snapped. 

‘You’re a surgeon,’ Jim said, flinging a challenging eyebrow as McCoy stared incredulously back at him. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be awesome at all that…’ He did a weird dance with his fingers, ‘hand-eye… coordination stuff?’

‘It’s different with bodies,’ he muttered. ‘Especially when those bodies are on an operating table _on solid ground_.’ 

‘And what’re you going to do when the operating table is in space?’ 

McCoy flinched, jaw clenching at the visceral panic paralyzing his hands. He couldn’t even let himself think about that just yet, he _couldn’t_... 

‘Okay…’ Jim clearly saw enough to drop that question. His tone was forcibly calm as he tapped on the controls again. ‘Never mind that. Just watch for now, I’ll show you…’

His hands slid uselessly into his lap, eyes narrowing as Jim took control of the shuttle and entered a maneuver that effortlessly cleared the first wave of fake obstructions. ‘Show off,’ he muttered.

‘But did you _see_ how that worked? Here, watch again…’ 

Despite the stubborn refusal burning behind his eyes, McCoy forced himself to watch as Jim calculated course corrections and cleared the debris field one increasingly ridiculous obstacle at a time. Each command sequence was perfectly logical, even to McCoy’s understanding, but so fast, so precise.

The performance was so flawless it was nearly boring. As he stared, McCoy’s attention drifted away from the actions and consequences of Jim’s hands, focusing instead on the dexterity of those hands in themselves. There was raw talent in them, an easy confidence and energy that charmed Jim’s every move, pulled a proud line up the hard plane of his back and intensified the flash of his eyes. 

Not that there was anything to be learned about space flight from watching Jim’s face. But the longer his eye remained transfixed by those animated features, the more he understood Pike’s infinite patience for the kid’s erratic behaviour. He could see the skill he had honed in such a short time, the dizzying potential that propelled his every move.

And pinning him down to the mats in the combat gym… what had it been? _Six times._ Hell, yes, he could see that as well, and damned if it didn’t simmer the blood in McCoy’s veins. 

‘Got it now?’ 

McCoy blinked rapidly. They had cleared the debris field, though he couldn’t recall when or how Jim had done it. ‘Sure,’ he grunted absently.

‘Good, because it’s your turn.’ A sweep of fingers brought the debris field back into being in all its intimidating glory. McCoy shuddered at the sight, even as the beginnings of a rootless, irrational anger quaked through his hands, stiffening his fingers to awful claws as they reached for the controls. 

‘You okay?’ 

McCoy snorted beneath his breath; finally, the kid sounded like he gave a shit. ‘Sure,’ he repeated through clenched teeth. ‘Never better.’

\+ + +

‘Gotta hand it to you,’ Jim slurred two hours and five rounds later. ‘That was way more adventurous than I ever gave you credit for.’

‘Shut the hell up, Jim.’ There was still a horrid ache in his jaw where it had struck the console, a pain his hypo and half a bottle of bourbon had doing nothing to fix. McCoy massaged the area with a wince, glaring at the blank and boring dorm room wall past Jim’s heavy-lidded bleariness. 

That was even worse, somehow, having Jim drag him back to their room rather than risk being seen in public with his failure of a friend. McCoy had stumbled out of that shuttle wanting nothing more than a drink at their usual haunt, or even the bar closest to the hangar bay but damned if he had been able to suggest even a whisper of that around the panic still seizing him by the throat.

And maybe if he had been fit to be seen by decent folk, Jim might have kept more of his clothes on for this pathetic excuse for a pep talk. That t-shirt of his was so damn thin he may as well have stripped it off for all the good it did.

With a low growl, McCoy swiveled his chair sideways entirely, placing Jim well outside even his peripheral vision. The move, he noticed, also put him a lot closer to the bottle on his desk. He drained his glass, slammed it down in readiness for the next round.

‘You sure you need another…?’

‘Only thing I’m good at these days, kid.’ 

‘Bones.’ That ridiculous name had never sounded so serious, so personal as it did now on Jim’s lips; the cadence of it slowed his hands, made him risk another glance back. ‘Look... there’s incompetence, which we both know you couldn’t manage even if you tried. So then there’s fear, but seriously? This has to be something more.’

‘Bullshit.’ His hands didn’t shake as he picked up his bourbon – his hands _never_ shook, damn it – but sweat made his fingers slip slick and ugly against the bottle as he filled his glass.

‘It’s not.’ Jim waved his own glass for a refill, bloodshot eyes hard and accusing. ‘There’s something else going on here,’ he muttered as McCoy grudgingly topped up his glass. ‘I know it.’

‘When did you become a goddamned psychologist?’

‘When did you stop being one?’ Jim’s shout startled them both, shattering their lazy fog like a sledgehammer. The ringing accusation slumped McCoy into his chair, numb as Jim recovered himself, scrubbed a hand through his tousled hair. ‘M’sorry,’ he mumbled as his hand dragged down over his face. 

‘Why does it bother you so much?’ His question dropped bluntly belligerent into the awkward silence. ‘What do you care whether I get the hang of this flying shit or not?’

‘I’m not going on the Enterprise without you,’ Jim snapped, so blindly childish that it set McCoy’s teeth on edge.

‘You might have to get used to the idea.’ He drained his bourbon, slammed his empty glass down with a resounding clang. ‘So why don’t you focus on your own crazy schemes and leave me the hell alone, okay?’

‘Bones…’

‘That’s not my name,’ he growled sharply, ‘and I’m not your goddamn sidekick.’ His chair fell over as he leapt to his feet. ‘But I get it, you’ll get yours… you always do.’ His unsteady eye stumbled over Jim’s youthful beauty. ‘You’ll get the Enterprise, get Captain Pike…’

‘Pike?’ The anger that had started to darken those bottomless blue eyes blinked out of focus, giving way to a confusion that was nothing to the panic wringing the air from McCoy’s lungs. ‘What does Captain Pike have to do with this?’

‘Nothing.’ He spat it out quickly, tried to kill the question dead with a scathing glare. ‘ _Nothing_ ,’ he repeated, and _shit_ , that may have already gone too far. Jim’s brow was furrowing now, full lips slack with questions. ‘Just… damn it.’ 

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out,’ he growled, throwing his coat around his hunched shoulders. His arm stuck in one of the sleeves, ruining what should have been a swift exit.

‘Yeah, but _where_?’ Jim rose to his feet as well, with somewhat less of a drunken stagger. ‘Bones… I mean…’ He hesitated at McCoy’s warning glower, hands raised in feeble apology. ‘Sorry… hold on, I’ll get my…’

‘You’ll get nothing, kid.’ He finally got his arm through the sleeve, a satisfying punch to drive his glare home. ‘I’m going out,’ he repeated, harder and slower. ‘ _Alone._ Got it?’

He disappeared into the night before Jim had the chance to fight or give up; truth be told, he wasn’t sure which he feared the most.

\+ + +

The key code to Pike’s apartment had never changed, not since that first night. McCoy found it hard to believe that his lover was so indifferent about security measures, but it served now to let him slip through the door and the dark living area behind it to the bedroom he knew so well.

McCoy paused in the doorway, appreciating the rare sight of his Chris asleep in his large, inviting bed. Without the interruption of McCoy’s body, Pike favoured sleeping on his side: sheets slung low down his toned back but drawn tight to his chest while his tousled head half-buried itself in the pillow, brow unfurrowed and lips beautifully slack. His slumbering curl left a generous opening on the other side of the bed, large enough for McCoy to slide into place at his back but he stepped gently along Pike’s side instead, sinking to his knees on the floor to better examine his lover’s sleeping face. 

Despite his silent movements, something in his presence must have stirred Pike from his sleep. Eyebrows furrowed, lips tensed before those transparent eyes flickered open, widened as they spotted McCoy staring into him. ‘Leo…?’

‘You’re amazing, you know.’ 

Pike blinked slowly, a sleepy hand rising to rub at his eyes. ‘I like to think so,’ he mumbled, and McCoy ducked his head to stifle a chuckle that nearly brought tears to his eyes.

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he said, looking up again to watch consciousness slip steadier into Pike’s clearing eyes. ‘The way you can take anything in stride… nothing rattles you at all, does it?’

‘I… don’t know.’ With a stretch and a sleepy hum, Pike gave him a slow, sweeping look. ‘Having you appear at my bedside is hardly going to rattle me, now is it?’ There was a hint of flirtation in the question, but his gaze remained solemn, aware of the serious intent lurking beneath McCoy’s question.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand it,’ he murmured, staring back down at his hands resting mute and useless on his knees. ‘Why a man like you is bothering with me at all…’

‘It’s not been for lack of trying on my part.’ A bare arm slipped from beneath the sheets, fingers trailing warm up the side of his bowed face. ‘I wish I knew where all that self-doubt came from,’ Pike murmured, a sleepy tongue deepening the hint of sadness in his voice. ‘Wish I knew how to make it better… shit, Leo, is that a bruise…?’

‘It’s nothing you could fix, darling.’ McCoy turned his head away from Pike’s touch, tucked an apologetic kiss into the palm of his hand. ‘It’s always been me. Things with Joss… they started falling apart even before Papa…’ He sucked in a harsh breath, tightened his lips as he regathered his thoughts. ‘She’s a goddamn genius, y’know. Went up to Yale for intergalactic law, top of her class, had wild dreams about serving in the Federation’s High Court. Which, of course, would’ve meant space travel and plenty of it… and maybe you can guess how I felt about that.’

‘I might,’ Pike conceded slowly. There was a furrow between his brows, doubts piling heavy in his gaze. McCoy hunched himself impossibly smaller at Pike’s bedside, ran a weary hand through his hair.

‘You don’t,’ he admitted bleakly. ‘You couldn’t… no one like you ever would. You wouldn’t, and she didn’t… you’re so much alike, really, more than I would’ve thought but it’s always the same…’

‘I want to try, though.’ The sheets rustled in the dark as Pike rose up on a propped elbow. ‘Leo… make me understand what this is about. Please.’

‘There’s nothing to understand, that’s the thing.’ He could hear the impatience, the anger in his slurred voice that warned too harshly of past mistakes; he blew out a shaky breath, willed his heart to steady in his chest. ‘Jim thinks I’m hiding something, like there’s some horrible trauma that I need to move past before I’ll be able to fly…’ He stifled a laugh, scathing and half-delirious, into the back of his hand. ‘That would be nice,’ he admitted bitterly. ‘As he likes to point out, I’m a goddamn psychologist. If I could’ve rubbed this out with a therapist, I’d have done it years ago.’

‘I’m glad it’s not that,’ Pike said softly, thick with relief. ‘I had wondered… worried about you, if this was going to stir up something bad…’

‘Nothing I haven’t known since birth.’ His reassuring smile felt brittle on his lips, barely a comfort. ‘Nothing but plain old-fashioned aviophobia. I have some throwback genes in my blood that keep telling me humans belong on solid ground and no amount of common sense has managed to shake that loose. That’s the simple, god-fucking-honest truth of it. There’s no fixing it. There’s nothing you or Jim can say or do to make me any less of a coward.’

He let the truth sit there without further comment, flat and unadorned as an open wound, slowly seeping blood from neglect as the silence drew itself out. He waited, hand pressed over his mouth and eyes shut against a lurch of nausea that may have been nerves or too much bourbon or both, waiting for disappointment or dismissal to cast him away. 

He waited, until the awful silence became too much. Aching with dread, he forced himself to look, but Pike’s face was unreadable in the darkness of the bedroom.

‘Chris…. Just, say something. Please.’

His increasingly clear eyes blinked slowly, slipped away as a frown tugged his lips. The sheets hissed over his hip as Pike sat upright and stretched his neck with a roll of his head that landed on his bedroom’s curtain wall of windows revealing a sky turning indigo with the first signs of dawn.

‘Have you ever seen sunrise around here?’

‘Huh?’ McCoy sat back heavily on his heels. ‘Uh… no.’

‘That’s not right.’ Sheets thrown back revealed the disappointment of well-worn sleep pants as Pike swung his legs out of the bed. ‘Give me a few minutes to get dressed. We’re going for a walk.’ 

Exhausted confusion kept McCoy planted on his knees as Pike strode past him and vanished into the bathroom. Still wearied from a long night’s walk, he rested an arm on the low mattress to pillow his head, to gather his senses closer to the comfort of Pike’s scent, his lingering heat. He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes on a shuddering exhale as his fingers clutched at the sheets, wringing out the aching uncertainty of this long solitude as his lover moved unseen behind him. 

The brush of fingers through his hair startled him out of his sullen mood, left him blinking blindly upward as Pike offered a shadowed hint of a smile.

‘Up you get,’ he murmured, coaxing McCoy to his feet with a firm hand at his elbow. ‘The sun isn’t going to wait for you to get in a better mood.’

The walk north was uncannily quiet, save for the hum of early-morning service drones high above their heads that soon faded to the near-silent clop of occasional joggers as the towering glass of Richmond gave way to the old Presidio grounds skirting the Academy. The breeze bit sharper at his ears as the bay emerged into full view, but McCoy only mustered a token protest as Pike walked them onto the boardwalk leading to Torpedo Wharf. Out here, the brisk wind rushed from all sides and whipped the disorderly fringe of his hair into his eyes; McCoy shoved it impatiently aside, grumbled his reluctant thanks as Pike slipped an arm around him. His body’s warmth was a welcome comfort, but McCoy refused to forget that the cold and fog surrounding them now was all Pike’s fault. 

‘Damned if I know what we’re meant to see through all this,’ he muttered as he glared into the clouds of condensation rolling thick over the water.

‘Wait.’ Pike’s fingers circled lightly over his hip, a quiet touch to match the hush of the world. Stifling a sigh, McCoy leaned into the anchor of his lover’s solid stance on the pier and stared at the dull heave of fog over the water. In the barely awakened light, it was all so much grey, possibly blue and purple in the deepest shadows that were, maybe, starting to glow with some unseen intensity. Even as he watched, the colour of light shifted brighter still as violet bled into red and fog smouldered into flame as the first sliver of the sun sliced the distant horizon.

The beauty of it kicked him out of the cold and sent a fresh shiver through his body, deeper than skin or self-doubt. As daybreak filled his gaze, he began to understand why his Chris had dragged him out here to witness something common to every corner of the Earth that, somehow, felt entirely private, all their own when seen like this.

‘I can’t believe you haven’t been out here before.’

‘Yeah, well…’ McCoy stuffed his hands into his pockets, transfixed by the glow of colour over the bay. ‘Assuming I’m not pulling a late shift at Starfleet Medical, there’s always something more appealing on offer at this ungodly hour. Sleep, you…’ He paused, bit his lip. ‘Not necessarily in that order.’

Pike chuckled softly. ‘Nice to know,’ he murmured, tightening their embrace by a marginal squeeze. ‘I know it’s not until next week.’

‘What’s not?’

Pike turned his head sharply. ‘Really, Leo?’ He arched an eyebrow, held his gaze until McCoy groaned and shook his head. 

‘Damn it, Chris, I’m not some doe-eyed kid. What do I care…’

‘Well, I happen to care that you’re not a child. Even better that you’ll be a year older,’ he added with a smirk. ‘Bedding a thirty-year-old man sounds a lot less scandalous than when you’re twenty-nine, don’t you think?’

He rolled his eyes, even as he repressed a chuckle. ‘I dunno, think I liked it more when it was scandalous.’

‘Well, seeing as I’m a Starfleet captain and you’re still a cadet, I’m sure we can keep that spark alive,’ Pike replied dryly. The smile lingered at the corner of his mouth, but the sidelong drift of his eye across the fog-obscured waters deepened the ache in McCoy’s chest.

‘Does it bother you?’ 

‘Of course not.’ Pike made a scathing noise as he rolled his eyes. ‘Not in the slightest… more the opposite, if I’m being completely honest and don’t you forget it.’ With a leering smirk, he gave McCoy’s ass a light smack that caught him off guard and shot an unexpected burst of playfulness through his stormy mood. 

‘Dirty old bastard.’ He retaliated swiftly, grinning as Pike jumped in surprise at being at the receiving end of a slap for a change. 

‘Stop distracting me,’ he muttered as he drew away a cautious step, rummaging in his coat pocket. McCoy shrugged, unrepentant.

‘You started it.’

‘Now you’re just being childish.’ Despite the complaint, Pike’s smile warmed fondly as he drew a brushed metal box from his pocket: small and sleek and unmistakably ornamental in a way that made the breath catch anxiously in McCoy’s throat.

‘What’s that?’

‘Like I said, it’s a week early,’ Pike shrugged as he held the box outward. ‘But something tells me this is better than waiting.’

His hand hovered uncertainly before plucking up the box for a closer examination. It was lighter than it looked, finely crafted with a clasp that was barely perceptible beneath his astute fingertips. The lid snapped open at his first testing touch, revealing a fine coil of something dark that glinted sharply in the first rays of daylight. 

Confused, he traced his fingertip over a circular curve, confirming that the thin strand had a metallic solidity that was strangely warm beneath his touch. ‘What…’

‘It’s a khav’e’shal bracelet.’ Pike slipped past his fingers, extracting the darkly shimmering length of metal links. The coil unwound as a thin strand, intricately interlocked like tiny vertebrae and longer than would be needed to circle any human wrist. ‘From the Pentalius system.’

‘So that’s what you get up to when I’m too busy to see you,’ he muttered, his eye transfixed by the points of silver catching in the light. ‘Get anything nice for yourself on this intergalactic shopping spree?’

Pike grinned and shook his head, fingers working at the bracelet’s clasp. ‘I’ve had it a very long time,’ he corrected absently, drawing out the fine chain between both hands. ‘A token of appreciation from the High Vicereine, after I negotiated Pentalion Prime’s entry into the Federation.’

‘And I guess it wasn’t to your taste?’ McCoy asked wryly, but Pike’s soft smile was unfazed as he shook his head again.

‘It was never mine to keep,’ he said vaguely. ‘And I’ll need your other arm.’

McCoy let the hand holding the box drop, raised his left instead and watched bemusedly as Pike nudged back the sleeve of his jacket and the shirt underneath. ‘Is this meant to be…’ He hesitated, bit his lip at the care Pike took winding the bracelet in five carefully layered rotations around his wrist. ‘…I dunno, symbolic or something?’

‘It’s meant to be your birthday present,’ Pike murmured evasively, eyes fixed downward as he fastened the clasp. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Yeah…’ He breathed out the realization quietly, slowly turning his hand to take in the sleek, understated gleam of the chain against his skin. It was unlike anything he had ever owned before in his life but in this moment, there was something comforting, even familiar in the repetitive roping of alien-warm metal around his wrist. ‘You know what it reminds me of,’ he murmured with a private little smile that Pike returned with a sly grin of his own. 

‘The thought crossed my mind,’ he admitted, running his thumb over the fine links. ‘It’s not exactly regulation,’ he added with a self-conscious grimace, ‘and it’s not like you would want to wear it all the time but I figured…’

‘You figured just fine, darling.’ McCoy swept in to silence Pike with a slow, grateful kiss. ‘Thank you,’ he hushed, warming his hands beneath the hem of Pike’s coat. ‘Though I don’t know what I did to deserve the surprise.’ 

‘You never do,’ Pike sighed. He leaned inward, pressed brow to brow for a long silence that plucked an anxious thread in McCoy’s chest and reverberated him back to where this walk had started in the dark of Pike’s bedroom. Swallowing tightly around the hard weight of uncertainly in his throat, McCoy closed his eyes and inhaled the calm of Pike’s scent before attempting to speak.

‘I’m sorry.’ He gave his head the smallest self-deprecating shake, reluctant to disrupt the closeness of their bodies. ‘I know you get fed up with my shit, hell, I’m getting pretty tired of it my–’

‘Don’t apologize.’ The hands Pike had brought to rest on his arms tightened their grip, echoing the hint of frustration lacing his weary voice. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. There’s _nothing_ wrong with you, don’t you get that?’

‘Not really,’ he admitted baldly, blunted by confusion. ‘Plenty wrong with me, last I checked. We wouldn’t even be out here at this ungodly hour if I hadn’t broken into your apartment like some neurotic wreck.’

‘But I like it when you break into my apartment.’

‘I think I’m still drunk,’ McCoy added sullenly. 

‘Even if you are, I wouldn’t turn you away.’ A kiss brushed the hard line of his frown. ‘I don’t think I ever could.’

‘That’s worrying,’ he said before he could stop himself, brow furrowing as a hint of a laugh gusted against his stubbled cheek. 

‘Maybe,’ Pike admitted. ‘But I never said I was perfect.’

‘But you _are_ ,’ McCoy protested impatiently, frustrated at his failure to get Pike to understand. ‘And I want to be good enough for you, I really do, but–’

Pike interrupted him again, not with words but with a kiss that stole every protest flooding his mouth in a flawless, shivering moment that McCoy clung to with all the desire in his body even as Pike drew back again, still close enough to breathe the same air.

‘You really think I’m perfect?’

‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ he muttered, already embarrassed at letting that admission slip loose even as Pike grinned, dove in for another kiss. 

‘So why can’t I think the same of you?’ 

‘Because that’s just ridiculous.’

‘Being ridiculous is a lover’s prerogative, Leo.’ His smile, his stubbornness was unshakable. ‘I don’t get to claim much where you’re concerned, so I’ll make the most of what I’ve got.’

Even playfully stated, the reminder of all their limitations, all their secrets had McCoy glowering downward again. ‘You deserve more,’ he sighed.

‘No, _you_ deserve more. You always have.’ Pike drew back by aching centimentres, drew his thumb over the fresh frustration turning his mouth. ‘You said you were holding Jocelyn back.’ The statement was tight, her name a reluctant and foreign sound on his tongue. ‘But I’m having a hard time seeing it that way.’ 

‘You would,’ he said, frowning into the collar of his coat as Pike took both his hands in a firm grip, warming the cold tips of his fingers.

‘Sounds to me like she left you behind. And I don’t mean that to sound horrible,’ he added with a grimace, ‘but Leo… it’s nothing I would’ve done.’

‘You wouldn’t know…’

‘Wouldn’t I?’ Pike snapped defiantly. ‘Isn’t that what you want to ask me? Whether I’d end this if you can’t learn to fly? If you get assigned somewhere else?’

‘I…’ McCoy bit his lip, then sighed in defeat. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ 

‘Of course not.’ A hand caught his chin, forced him to confront Pike’s stern gaze. ‘I didn’t fall for you because of your piloting prowess.’

‘I should damn well hope not,’ he huffed, reacting long before the full weight of Pike’s words had a chance to sink in. ‘Wait, what?’

Pike smiled, a small and secretive curve of his lips. ‘I’m not in the habit of having one-night stands that go on for two years,’ he said, fingers trailing fondly up the side of his face to brush the mess of his windblown hair from his eyes. ‘Or taking cadets to my bed, for that matter. You’re already the exception to every rule I’ve ever had, so if I need to rethink a few more expectations…’

‘You don’t mean…’ McCoy slowly shook his head. ‘Chris, you’ve given more than enough already, you can’t…’

‘That’ll be my decision, beautiful, when and if it comes to that.’ Despite the kind smile, there was a stubborn thread of steel in his voice that demanded agreement. In the bedroom, that tone may have worked but McCoy refused to let it lie unchallenged. 

‘You shouldn’t have to make that choice,’ he insisted. ‘I’m not going through this flying shit so you have to make a choice like that, damn it. It’s my turn to meet you halfway for a change… at least,’ he added, faltering with a frown, ‘that’s what I’m trying to do.’

‘And it means even more to me… Leo,’ he sighed, shaking his head, ‘Nothing I’ve done for you was anywhere near as difficult as what you’re doing now. I’m grateful that you’re even trying.’

‘I don’t want to just _try_ , though,’ he growled impatiently, ‘I’m going to pass that test. This trying shit just isn’t going to cut it, damn it.’

Pike raised an eyebrow. ‘No wonder you intimidated the shit out of the rest of the medical track,’ he said. ‘You must have been terrifying at Ole Miss.’

‘Chris,’ he groaned, ‘don’t you start…’

Another kiss disarmed him, swift but achingly sweet. ‘I won’t, then,’ he promised. ‘Go pass that test, then, if it’s what you need to do. But go into it knowing that what we have… what we are, it doesn’t live or die depending on how it goes. Got that?’

McCoy stared back skeptically, desperately, but there was nothing but sincerity gazing back at him. Until that plain-faced confidence had time to sink into McCoy’s own consciousness, it would have to do. ‘I think so,’ he decided slowly. ‘If you’re sure…’

‘Good.’ Another kiss rewarded him: slower, less sweet. ‘Now,’ he murmured, lips still dangerously close, ‘if you still doubt me, I have another hour to convince you if you care to walk me back to my bed.’

‘I don’t doubt you, darling.’ He leaned in to return the kiss, to warm himself in the heat of his Chris’ body. ‘But if the invitation is open all the same…’

‘Always.’ Pike’s hands slid under his coat, found and traced a bare strip of skin just beneath the hem of his shirt that shivered along McCoy’s spine.

‘Cold,’ he complained, twitching away from Pike’s wind-chilled fingers and gasping softly as they tightened at his hips, held him fast.

‘I’ll fix that,’ Pike promised, a deep hush at his throat. ‘Come with me.’

McCoy groaned, nodded eagerly. It had been so long. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘ _Yes._ ’


	3. Chapter 3

McCoy glanced surreptitiously at the time displayed on the sign-in terminal for the training shuttles as he paced anxiously past. He was early, but the fear that Jim would never show at all kept him on a scalpel-thin edge of anxiety, tightly balanced between retreat to the closest bar and staying put out of stubborn defiance. 

A herd of cadets wandered past, glancing him over as they proceeded to the shuttles and McCoy forced himself to hold his ground, to remind himself that none of those kids had smirked or laughed or done anything to feed the ugly insecurity that came of being too old and too incompetent to show his face around here, not without…

‘Bones?’

Relief flooded through him before McCoy remembered that he had no right to expect Jim to be any less scornful than the other cadets in the hangar, not after last night. ‘Surprised you showed up,’ he admitted, eyes fixed evasively on the chronometer and noticing that Jim was ten minutes early for their training slot. 

‘I could say the same to you.’ Without looking, McCoy relied on the sound of footsteps, an encroaching heat that barely touched his senses to know that Jim had drawn up at his side. ‘Have you even been back to our room since…?’

He shook his head sharply. 

‘No wonder you stink.’

‘Bullshit,’ he growled, hackles rising despite himself. ‘I showered…’ _At Chris’ place,_ he almost said before he remembered to bite his tongue. McCoy glanced around anxiously, panic dissolving at the mischievous grin on Jim’s face. ‘Goddamn brat,’ he muttered, rolling his eyes. ‘ _You_ stink.’

‘I smell amazing,’ Jim said brightly. ‘So are we doing this or not?’

McCoy raised an eyebrow, amazed as ever at the kid’s resilience. Nothing seemed to make a dent in that wicked smile. ‘Why the hell not,’ he decided on a groan. As ever, it was much easier to let Jim drag him off than put up any half-assed show of resistance. ‘Where are we…’ He stared back at the shuttle fleet as Jim led him to a distant corner of the hangar.

‘We’re doing something different today.’ He opened the hatch on a neglected looking pod, revealing a cramped training console a fraction of the size of a shuttle’s standard interior.

‘Yeah, I’ll say.’ Whatever it was, flying was definitely off the menu. Confounded as he was, McCoy felt one of those anxious knots in his belly loosen its hold as Jim coaxed him into the pod’s only seat.

‘It’s one of the old simulators,’ Jim explained as he pulled the hatch door shut with a resounding bang that deafened all noise and light from the hangar beyond. ‘Hardly anyone uses them anymore but the interface is the same as the training shuttles.’

McCoy scrutinized the console as Jim leaned in close and set the controls alight. As promised, everything before him was recognizable from all their previous sessions. His fingertips brushed the console thoughtfully, easier without the threat of space waiting at the touch of his hand. 

‘Good?’ The breath of Jim’s voice was warm at the side of his face; the simulator was really too small for two.

‘Yeah,’ he said softly. ‘But will this really be enough? For my test, I mean…’

‘It will.’ Something dangled at the corner of McCoy’s peripheral vision; he turned, frowned at the strip of black cloth hanging from Jim’s fingers. 

‘What the hell?’

‘Trust me?’

‘Should I?’ His eye flicked anxiously between Jim’s encouraging gaze and the inscrutable black cloth. ‘What’re you up to?’

‘It’ll help, I promise.’

He relented with a sigh and a wave of his hand. ‘Do what you will.’

Even with his tacit permission, the sweep of darkness over his vision was alarming. ‘Jim...?’ His hands flew up to his face, catching in the cloth as it wrapped tight over his eyes. 

‘Trust me,’ he repeated, quiet yet more fervent as the blindfold tightened to a knot at the back of his head. ‘Please?’

His hands dropped into his lap, despite the misgivings that reduced his consent to a reluctant jerk of his head. McCoy’s body had only one frame of reference for a situation like this, and the memory of it stirred an untimely rush of blood deep in his groin. Pike reserved blindfolding for only those most decadent occasions when depriving him of sight was one tactic among many his lover used to restrain him, to reduce him to raw and trembling need. Each searing sense memory burned too close beneath his skin as Jim clasped his shoulder, so firm and possessive, _no_ , merely reassuring, nothing more.

‘Get your hands on the controls,’ Jim said evenly, smooth as a mesmerist. He obeyed carefully, fingers hesitant against the subtle glide of the console. ‘You can see it in your mind now, right?’

Strangely enough, he could; he had read the manuals desperately, had retreated into their predictability as his only constant during those practice runs in the black. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, his voice rough in his throat.

‘Then this will be easy for you.’ Jim ignored his derisive snort, breathed close to the side of his face as he leaned over the chair. ‘Enter the launch sequence.’

Defiance stung the tip of his tongue; this was ridiculous, impossible – and yet, his fingers were already in motion, sinking into the one pattern he had repeated most of all. He heard the familiar sequence of beeps answer his touch, followed by something new, an engine hum without the power to give it life. ‘What the hell…’ he muttered, head turning blindly to read the odd echo in the tiny pod.

‘Forward quarter-impulse, Bones.’ The same steady tone, more coaxing than commanding but the effect on his erection was undeniable and beyond wrong. Jim only had eyes for everyone at the Academy _except_ him, which wasn’t even worth thinking on when he had his Chris, who was just as much to blame for his pathetic state as Jim – hell, more so, even. Either way, he prayed the simulator was as dark as he remembered, and hunched closer over the console just in case as he found the lever to his right and eased it carefully forward. How far forward, how fast was hard to read without sight, and he growled under his breath as a warning beep stabbed at his ear. 

‘Damn it.’ His hand flinched away from the propulsion control, but Jim’s hand closed around his wrist, held him to his task with a steady force that nearly tore a moan from his throat.

‘Only a little bit faster, Bones,’ he insisted firmly. ‘You’re so close…’

Jim wasn’t kidding; this was driving him beyond distraction. He clenched his teeth while pushing the lever beneath his captive hand, thankfully with no more alarming noises from the simulator. Marginally, warily, he let himself relax as Jim’s grip faded away.

‘Good,’ Jim praised as the familiar sounds of flight flooded his ears. ‘Now, we’re gonna keep it simple this time out. Establish standard orbit.’

‘You call this simple?’ he growled. ‘I can’t damn well _see._ ’

‘You don’t need to see,’ Jim said, almost reasonably. ‘You know all the steps, and I’ll be right here the entire time, okay?’

That, McCoy thought gloomily as he fumbled to connect muscle memory to the string of commands in his ear, was exactly what he was worried about.

\+ + +

‘Doctor.’

McCoy nearly stumbled over his own feet, eyes widening as Pike fell into step at his side. ‘Captain?’ he attempted uncertainly, casting a wary glance around the crowded and sunlit plaza as he attempted to maintain a purposeful stride.

‘I like it when you call me that,’ Pike teased softly. ‘Are you blushing?’

‘What’re you doing here?’ he hissed, barely audible from the corner of his mouth. 

‘Walking. It’s allowed, isn’t it?’

‘Anyone can see…’

‘A cadet and an instructor walking together on campus is nothing to see,’ Pike said lightly, gazing blandly ahead and even offering a smile and nod to a passing cluster of cadets without a hint of shame. ‘Don’t worry, Leo. Tempting though it is, I’m not planning to take you up against the nearest wall for everyone to see.’

Damn it, he was properly blushing now. ‘That’s a real pity,’ he murmured, choosing to relax into their indifferent pretense. Even with a respectable distance between them, his body responded to the familiar pull of Pike’s presence, _so close_ but impossible to touch out here in broad daylight. ‘So is this down to chance or have you been stalking me through campus surveillance again?’ 

‘Bit of both,’ Pike admitted with a shrug. ‘Your travel between classes is predictable enough, but I’m not usually out here at the same time. Got lucky today.’

‘Glad the creepiness paid off,’ he scoffed under his breath, though he also offered Pike the tiniest, most discreet hint of a smile. ‘Been missing you,’ he added quietly.

‘Miss you too.’ Their eyes met, a raw and aching lapse in judgment before they swiftly broke away and continued staring down the path ahead. ‘Is it getting better?’ Pike asked after a heavy silence. ‘Your lessons, I mean, since that morning…’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ McCoy hadn’t been into space since that last disastrous shuttle lesson, which was both a relief and a new cause of stress as the end of term crept nearer. ‘Jim’s been trying something a bit different lately.’

‘Yes, I’d heard about that.’ 

‘That so?’ A prickling sickness too much like guilt chilled his gut before McCoy could tamp it down. He had no cause for shame, especially now he was finally enduring the blindfold and Jim’s level, commanding voice without a constant hard-on. But if someone in the hangar bay had noticed something… if people were talking…

‘He’s probably the first cadet in years to notice the old simulators are even there.’ The familiar amusement in Pike’s voice deflated some of McCoy’s anxiety, stirred something else in its place. ‘Not a bad idea, taking flight out of the equation for now. Shame I didn’t think of it myself.’

‘Wish you had,’ he said fervently. McCoy licked at his suddenly dry lips. ‘Y’know, if you’re not busy tonight…’

‘ _You’re_ busy tonight,’ Pike interrupted. ‘Kirk told me you have training booked, and I’m not about to deprive him of your company.’

‘He’s had plenty of my company lately.’

‘And you’re not the only one who has something to learn,’ Pike added, choosing to ignore McCoy’s grumbling aside. ‘Teaching you is doing Kirk a world of good. He deserves to finish the job now he’s taken you this far.’

McCoy risked another sidelong glance. ‘If you’re sure…’

‘Of course I am.’ Pike slowed as they reached the soaring steps of the next building. ‘And I’m afraid this is where I leave you,’ he said regretfully. ‘If we were anywhere else, you know I’d…’

‘I understand,’ he said gruffly, hands tightening at his sides to repress every urge to claim a kiss, an embrace, hell, even a handshake. ‘Gotta warn you, though, you’ll be getting it twice as bad next time, Captain.’

A mischievous spark brightened the reluctance hardening Pike’s features. ‘I’ll be holding you to that, Doctor.’

Pike turned to ascend the steps to Cochrane Hall, the very picture of indifferent dignity even if it didn’t spare him from the lascivious intent of McCoy’s lingering gaze in his wake. A sigh deflated some of the desire from his chest as a fresh wave of red uniforms obscured his lover from view; he didn’t have time to linger anyway if he was going to make his next lab on time.

Even that brief indulgence was too much; he flew into his surgical lab nearly ten minutes late with barely a moment to return the instructor’s disapproving glower before throwing himself into today’s Vulcan neurosurgical simulation with the last despondent nursing candidate for assistance. Much like the real thing, time faded away as he worked, calm descending as he eased one complication, anticipated the next, snarled silently at an unexpected bleed before cauterizing it out of his path.

He gave the order to close and stepped back on a slow exhale as the holographic patient flickered out of existence. As ever, the abrupt end of the simulation rattled him out of his surgical headspace, left McCoy frowning as he became aware of his classmates hovering in a silent semicircle, his assistant failing to hide a delighted grin, Dr. Surina looking on with a grudging sort of admiration.

‘What?’ McCoy stripped off his gloves, shoved his hair off his sweating brow.

‘Their patients died over an hour ago,’ Surina explained with a shrug. ‘To be honest, McCoy, that was kind of the point.’

‘Really.’ Exhaustion was already setting in, carving gaping holes in what little patience he had ever possessed. ‘Seems a damned lousy point to make, sir.’ He glanced at the lab’s chronometer and cursed under his breath. ‘May I be excused? I’m meant to report to the hangar deck…’

‘You’d best hurry along, then.’ Surina dismissed him with a weary wave. ‘That’s what you get for showing up late to my lab.’

‘Right,’ he scoffed. McCoy paused to clasp hands with his nursing assistant, offering a grateful smile before retreating for the lockers, wrestling with his lab coat as he stalked away. He was half-undressed before realizing he didn’t have a flight suit stowed in his medical locker, but shrugged it off as he abandoned his uniform and threw on the somewhat wrinkled civilian clothes he kept aside in there instead. No big deal when he was technically off duty now, and his worn-out jeans and pullover would be far more forgiving of the next couple hours he would spend cramped into that old simulator pod.

He arrived slightly out of breath; sweat still prickling his brow and eyes narrowed as he scanned the hangar deck and spotted Jim trotting between the towering transports, flight suit on and a bag slung over his shoulder.

‘There you are,’ Jim greeted. ‘Why aren’t you suited up?’

‘Why are you?’ he asked blankly. ‘Aren’t we…’ McCoy gestured at the simulator, stomach flipping over as Jim grinned and shook his head. 

‘That old thing? Nah…’ Jim flung an arm around his shoulders, walking him back towards the training shuttles. ‘About time we got you back out there, Bones. I’ve been going too easy on you.’

‘You call all _that_ easy?’ he sputtered, heart pounding as the steam of the shuttle conduits licked at his throat. ‘I was flying that damn thing blindfolded.’

‘Exactly. Too easy.’

‘Shouldn’t I get changed…?’

‘You’re fine.’ Jim nudged him ahead into the nearest training shuttle, taking a sweeping look at McCoy’s clothes as he passed through the hatch. McCoy tugged at the frayed cuff of his shirt with a self-conscious grimace as Jim sealed them in and took the pilot’s seat, firing the shuttle to life in a skilled flurry of fingertips. ‘You gonna sit down?’

‘Aren’t you in my chair?’

‘Not for this ride.’ Jim flashed him a downright devilish grin. ‘Sit down and buckle up.’

McCoy covered his uncertainty with a scowl as he took the secondary pilot chair and tugged sharply at his safety harness; he scarcely had time to secure the last buckle before they were lifting off the hangar deck and gliding towards open air. His fingers tightened around the armrests as the shuttle tilted towards the upper atmosphere and they shuddered beyond the Earth’s gravitational pull into the unfettered black of space. With the horrible void came the whisper of panic, the awful unknown of imagining what shape this lesson might take. He closed his eyes, breathed in slowly, parted his lips on a measured exhale. _For Chris._ He could do this. Starfleet was full of idiots who could do this and if nothing else, he knew he wasn’t an idiot. _For Chris._

‘Beer?’

‘What?’ McCoy snapped his eyes open, jaw sagging speechless at the bottle Jim was waving at him. He blinked rapidly, wondering if he had somehow drifted off to sleep in his attempt to relax his nerves. ‘Are you kidding me?’

‘Do I look like I’m kidding? Here.’ Jim shoved the beer into McCoy’s confused hand and bent to rummage a second bottle and an opener from the bag he had dropped between their seats. He opened his beer with a flourish that sent the bent cap rattling under the shuttle console as he dove to catch the first foaming of beer from his bottle’s slender neck. ‘Well?’ he prodded, licking a stray rivulet from his lips. McCoy scowled, snatched the opener and bent his head over his more careful efforts to open his beer in the pressurized cabin. 

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘No, it’s Red Brick IPA.’ 

‘Seriously?’ He stared at the label for the first time, eyebrow rising at the familiar throwback design, something he hadn’t clapped eyes on for years. ‘Where the hell did you find this?’

‘Met a girl who has a cousin whose sister works at the brewery in Atlanta,’ Jim shrugged. ‘I’ll introduce you sometime.’

‘Please do.’ He took a hopeful first sip, groaned softly at the almost-forgotten explosion of hops across his tongue. ‘Damn, it’s been too long.’

‘Yeah, it’s really good.’ Jim tipped his head back for another swig of beer, wiped his mouth. ‘Surprised you haven’t been back for a restock in all this time.’

‘Easier said than done,’ he muttered, thumbing at the corner of the label with a frown. Even if he had stepped foot anywhere near Georgia since fleeing his old life, he doubted he would have done it for anything so trivial as a favourite beer. 

‘Why not? It’s not all that far away… see?’ 

McCoy flinched as he felt the shuttle stir into motion; he had almost forgotten where they were in the flow of beer and easy banter. ‘See what?’ he sputtered, clutching his bottle tighter as his other hand flew to his armrest. 

‘Home.’

And there it was, filling the forward viewing port with the glowing blue arc of the Earth as the shuttle came to another gentle pause in the void. Their position framed the middle American continent, from the fragile coastline of San Francisco to the hazy green of Georgia to the east – all its hidden veins and turmoils smudged away by an unthinkable distance that left nothing but lush peace before his eyes.

‘See what I mean?’ Jim said, a distant echo at McCoy’s side. ‘Nothing to it, really, just… Bones?’

‘Yeah.’ He didn’t look at Jim; he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the Earth – so incomprehensibly vast, but from here, how small at the same time…

‘You’ve never looked at it before, have you?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he growled.

‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’

McCoy pressed his fingers hard into his eyes to break the spell of the view, allowed himself a weary smirk as reality crept back into place. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘Fine, fair enough.’

‘How the hell did you manage that?’ Beneath the disbelief, Jim almost sounded impressed. ‘I know you’ve been on shuttles before…’

‘No windows in the washroom,’ he pointed out dryly.

‘What, and you never had to do all those stupid school trips around Alpha Centauri…?’

‘Papa always wrote me a doctor’s note.’ McCoy smiled wistfully to himself, remembering the sparkle in his father’s eye, the conspiratorial wink whenever he sent those transmissions to the school. ‘Not that mama much approved,’ he admitted. ‘Always said he was being too soft.’

‘That’s not such a bad thing,’ Jim said. ‘He sounds like a great dad.’

‘He was, yeah.’ A fresh bitterness flooded his dry mouth as McCoy took another swig of beer and contemplated the too-small stretch of the continent below him. ‘Far better than I’ve been.’

‘That’s not fair, Bones.’

‘Isn’t it?’ He waved a hand at the Earth below. ‘Look how close she is. Forget the damned beer, I haven’t seen Jo in over two years now…’

‘Not for lack of trying,’ Jim interrupted, fervent with what could only be blind loyalty. ‘You’ve done everything you can to get that ex of yours to agree to visitation, it’s not your fault she’s being–’ 

‘She’s being the way she’s being because of me,’ he protested. ‘And I can’t blame her for being wary when I didn’t try at all for half that time.’ Not until Chris made him see sense, and McCoy took another long drink of his beer to ease the sting of his ever-bitten tongue.

‘But you’re trying now,’ Jim countered. ‘All those transmissions you’ve sent… even if they’re not getting to her now, Joanna will see them when she’s older. She’ll understand.’

McCoy frowned speculatively at the continent below, sipping his beer as he let the possibility take hold. ‘Did you?’ he asked softly. The question slipped from his mouth as a deflection as much as a curiosity, and he wasn’t surprised at Jim’s long silence, broken finally by weary chuckle.

‘Glad I brought more beer.’ Jim drained his bottle in a long swallow that set his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath McCoy’s incredulous stare. The empty bottle vanished into Jim’s bag and was swiftly replaced by another.

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah, you ready?’ Yet another unopened beer emerged, dangled tantalizing from Jim’s fingers. McCoy sloshed the remainder of his first drink around its bottom, shrugged as he polished it off.

‘Why the hell not.’ Despite his easy reply, McCoy gave the second beer a wary look as he cracked it open. ‘Just promise me we’re not getting drunk in space.’

‘That would take a hell of a lot more than two beers.’

‘Fair point.’ He leaned back in his chair, returning his gaze to the Earth below while enjoying his second beer in a companionable quiet that somehow managed to make even the low hum of the engines sound soothing to McCoy’s ear. This silence wasn’t so different from the nights they had spent in their quarters, immersed in their studies or, more often, brushing off obligations and offers with a lazy night of take-out and holovids. At times like that, conversation was far less necessary than company.

‘I did understand. Eventually.’

‘Huh?’ McCoy blinked out of his contemplation of the Earth, turning to meet Jim’s strangely shy stare. 

‘You asked if I understood… when my mom…’ The wave of his hand claimed all of space, its vast remove from the planet below. ‘And no, at first I didn’t understand at all. I didn’t want to understand.’

There was something fragile in Jim’s voice, a smallness that echoed the boy he must have been. McCoy winced inwardly, looking back out the viewport to evade his own mind’s cruel attempt to transpose that same haunted look into Jo’s too-young eyes.

‘Don’t think I really tried until you came along.’

‘What?’ McCoy snapped his head around incredulously. ‘Me? I don’t…’

‘I couldn’t even imagine what it was like for her until I met you,’ Jim said, keeping his eyes fixed downward into his beer. ‘When I found out about Joanna, about what your ex had done to keep you away from her…’

‘When?’ He filled Jim’s trailing silence without thought, his tongue sparked by a question long unspoken. ‘How long have you known…?’

‘Oh… yeah, about that…’ Jim murmured sheepishly. ‘I, um… did a bit of digging around, a couple weeks after we met…’

‘Course you did,’ he snorted. ‘Creepy bastard.’

‘Hey, you were the raving drunk on that shuttle,’ Jim protested. ‘I needed to make sure you weren’t gonna throttle me in my sleep if I had to share a room with you.’

‘Tempting as it’s been,’ he growled, ‘I spent those first couple weeks patching up your ass, remember? Still do, last I checked.’

‘Yeah.’ Jim’s answering smile was overly fond. ‘That’s how I know you’d be a great dad if your ex ever gave you a chance,’ he said quietly. 

A complication of guilt and gratitude punched him hard in the gut, threw McCoy back into his beer; he drank deeply to cover for his lack of words.

‘And I guess that’s when I realized…’ Jim was similarly engrossed in his beer, picking at the label as he chewed at his full lower lip. ‘There were no easy choices for her either… just a shitty situation with too few options. She couldn’t make that better, no more than you can. I… I think I get that now.’

‘Well, I’m happy for you,’ he muttered uncomfortably. 

‘Don’t be like that,’ Jim groaned back. ‘I wanted to say I understand what you’re going through, but if you’re gonna be a jerk about it…’

‘I’m not,’ he protested. ‘No, I didn’t mean… , oh, hell, I… thanks,’ he decided eventually, offering a wary smile. ‘Really, Jim, it’s good of you.’

‘I try.’ His reply was even more quiet and hesitant, gazes held for only moments longer before they returned to their respective beers, silent once more. That familiar comfort returned, lingered for longer minutes more until McCoy’s beer was little more than a lukewarm puddle deep within the bottle. He glanced down at the bag between their seats, but even if there were more beerrs in there he hoped Jim wasn’t about to suggest another. Getting drunk and stranded in space had never ranked high on his wish list.

‘Wanna take us home?’

‘Hmmn?’ He checked the flight log on the console, raised an incredulous eyebrow. Nearly an hour they had been out, far longer than he had thought but nowhere near the duration of their usual sessions. ‘Already? I haven’t even piloted this tin can yet…’

‘Well, now’s your chance.’ Jim finished his beer, belched inelegantly as he transferred primary control to McCoy’s side of the console. ‘Try to find a direct route if you can, I’m supposed to be meeting Sinclair for a drink.’

‘Who?’

‘You know, from astrophysics? Red hair, legs up to _here_ …’

‘Right,’ he interrupted tightly. ‘Well, can’t have you missing that, can we?’ McCoy stabbed out the initial commands with a beer-blunted exasperation, tugging sharply at his harness as the shuttle angled towards re-entry. Just as Jim so eloquently requested, he didn’t waste time setting the leanest possible trajectory between their ocean of nowhere and San Francisco. Light swiftly flooded the cabin as they slipped beneath the atmosphere, bright compared to space but darkened well past dusk as the shuttle coasted closer to Earth and found its home in the Academy hangar bay.

As he powered down in a rush of relief, McCoy could feel the radiant burn of Jim’s grin upon him. ‘What?’ he snapped.

‘That was really good,’ he said, smile widening as McCoy scowled and ducked his head to unfasten his safety harness.

‘Don’t bullshit me.’ 

‘Would I do that?’ 

‘We both know the answer to that one, kid.’

‘Like we both know you nailed that re-entry?’ Jim was already out of his seat, tugging down the zip on his flight suit as he passed McCoy’s seat with a hard slap to the arm. ‘And in plenty of time for my date. Same time tomorrow, right?’

McCoy grunted his agreement as Jim vanished from the shuttle, leaving him to trace the now-familiar terrain of the console with a bemused frown as he marveled at the conspicuous absence of panic seizing his heart.

 

He was on his way to the third lesson after that one when his comm chimed for his attention. Seeing the name of his caller, McCoy slipped down a secluded corridor before responding.

‘Chris.’

 _‘Hi, beautiful.’_ The familiar greeting, the rough edges of that leather-warm voice brought an immediate smile to McCoy’s lips. _‘No “Captain” today?_

‘Can’t be indulging your ego every damn day of the week, darling. Especially not when I’m rushing across campus,’ he added by way of forewarning.

 _‘I know, promise I won’t keep you,’_ Pike replied. _‘I just wanted to wish you luck for tomorrow while I had a moment.’_

McCoy frowned, bit his lip as he strained his memory. ‘What’s tomorrow?’

An equally long pause met his confusion. Then, the softest hint of a laugh.

_‘Kirk hasn’t told you yet, has he?’_

‘Told me _what_?’ The amusement in Pike’s voice was almost as worrying as his own nagging ignorance. ‘Chris, what’re you… oh, fuck.’ It hit him then, sharp as a knife to the belly. ‘My test is _not_ tomorrow. No.’

_‘Actually, it is.’_

‘Bull _shit_.’

 _‘I’m sure Kirk wouldn’t have booked the test if he didn’t think you were ready,’_ Pike reasoned lightly. 

‘And who the hell is Jim to know if I’m ready or not?’ he growled back. 

_‘The highly skilled pilot who’s been training you for weeks and can see your progress better than you can, I suppose.’_

McCoy scowled at Pike’s dry response, biting back several scathing retorts before dismissing them all on an impatient groan. ‘You’re both horrible,’ he decided. 

_‘Don’t be too hard on him when you get to your lesson, okay? I’m sure he just wanted to surprise you.’_

‘Some surprise,’ he snorted. _Tomorrow_. Shit, he was already sweating at the very idea. ‘Any other requests before I go collect my prize?’

 _‘Only to nail that test like I know you can,’_ Pike replied smoothly. _‘Because once you do, I’m going to nail you to the first hard surface we can find.’_

He had to close his eyes a moment, willing the blood in his body to flow back up to his brain before he completely embarrassed himself. ‘Hell of a motivational speech, Captain,’ he said finally, his drawl a touch rough in his throat.

A pleased hum echoed from the comm, rich with satisfaction. _‘Even better if it does the job,’_ he said. _‘As you were, Cadet.’_

Easier said than done. McCoy exhaled slowly, tucking away Pike’s promise somewhere secret and safe beneath the shield of indignation he held at the ready to confront Jim in the hangar bay. Sure enough, he was waiting bright as ever, whistling idly to himself and looking too goddamn innocent to be believed.

‘You’re a prick, Jim.’

Somehow, that didn’t discourage the kid’s obnoxious grin. ‘Who ruined the surprise?’

‘Never mind that,’ he snapped as he closed the shuttle hatch behind him. ‘What the hell were you thinking? _Tomorrow_?’

‘Why not? It was either tomorrow or some other time next week,’ Jim shrugged. ‘End of term is coming up fast.’

‘Wonderful.’ McCoy dropped heavily into his pilot seat and powered up the shuttle in a flurry of frustrated fingertips. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘I’d hardly know where to begin. Oh,’ he added as the shuttle rumbled to life, ‘yeah, that’s cool, I guess we can get started now.’

‘Not like you’re giving me much time to dally about,’ he muttered under his breath as he entered the long-familiar launch sequence. ‘No point wasting time.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ Jim’s punch to his arm nearly threw off his efforts as much as that incorrigible grin. His own half-smile was reluctant but unstoppable as their shuttle as they coasted out of the hangar and into the sky.

\+ + +

A long, relieved breath bled out of McCoy’s lungs as the shuttle touched down on the hangar deck with only the slightest metallic shudder to disrupt his landing. His hands lingered on the controls long after he had powered them down to silence, as though pausing in that moment might hold the next at bay.

Beside him, the co-pilot chair creaked ominously, the only indication of another person in the shuttle at all. McCoy closed his eyes, waiting anxiously for something more than that warning stir of movement.

‘You going to sit in my shuttle all day, Cadet?’

‘Sorry?’ He raised an eyebrow at the equally unimpressed assessment officer, who kept her eyes fixed indifferently on the PADD in her hand.

‘We’re done here,’ she said flatly. ‘You’re dismissed.’

‘But…’ His mouth moved noiselessly a moment; he scarcely knew how to ask. ‘Did I… I mean, am I…?’

‘You passed, Cadet, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘Seriously?’ Despite the first spark of elation already kindling behind his sternum, disbelief refused to loosen the knots in his shoulders. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ve run tests with half your cohort over the last nine days so yes, Cadet, I’m more than sure.’ The commander finally lowered her PADD, meeting his incredulous stare long enough to offer a nod, a hint of a smile. ‘I won’t pretend you were the best I’ve seen this week, but you were far from the worst.’

McCoy slumped back in his seat, too stunned by the idea that he had actually _passed_ the damn thing to feel particularly insulted at the backhanded compliment. ‘What about the fire simulator?’

‘Fire simulator?’ For the first time, the commander’s stoic front cracked open to reveal an incredulous frown. ‘I don’t test on the fire sim until Level Three, and only when someone is being too cocky for their own damn good. Who the hell gave you that idea?’

McCoy stood abruptly, wiped his sweating palms on the legs of his uniform trousers. ‘Just some smart-ass,’ he muttered. ‘Thank you, ma’am. Means a lot.’

‘Dismissed,’ she repeated wearily. ‘Got another six of you to get through today alone.’

He nodded his way out, still too dazed to gather more than vague impressions of the swarming hangar deck around him. The overwhelming number of cadets and officers threading through the centre concourse reinforced the wearied commander’s words, swallowing McCoy in a sea of shouts and accidental brushes of bodies. Even the hand closing around his arm barely registered until it was followed by a sharp tug that lurched him sideways from drowning disorientation and into a tight gap between two inactive shuttles. He stumbled, eyes widening as he recognized the owner of the hand that kept pulling until they reached the narrow service corridor on the other side of the shuttles – a raw and uninviting stretch of space devoid of people but loud with the hiss of conduits. 

McCoy opened his mouth, hesitated as he wondered if he would need to shout to be heard, only it didn’t matter once Pike pinned him up against the shuttle and claimed his lips in a fiercely possessive kiss. Moaning deeply, he opened wider to welcome the tongue raking into him, pulled his Chris closer with a hand at the small of his back that shoved their hips fast together. The kiss swept up the tiny threads of relief that had been waiting since he left that shuttle, tangled them into a reckless triumph eager to be unleashed through a heavy roll of his hips, the hungry roving of his hands over Pike’s equally restless body.

‘Congrats, beautiful,’ Pike murmured as their lips reluctantly parted, warm and close against his cheek. ‘I knew you could do it.’

‘How did you know – oh, who am I kidding,’ he groaned with a roll of his eyes, though he held fast to Pike’s firm ass, keeping him as close as he could manage when his lover’s hand was slipping from his shoulder, down the centre of his heaving chest. 

‘How did it make you feel?’ Pike’s hand insinuated itself between their bodies, skilled fingers finding and tracing the shape of his growing arousal through his trousers.

McCoy bit his lip, arching into Pike’s touch. ‘Good,’ he admitted tightly. 

‘In control?’ he ventured softly. ‘Powerful?’

‘Yes…’ His answer stumbled on his tongue as Pike’s hand slipped beneath the waist of his trousers, groping him inside their tight confines. The fingers of his other hand swiftly opened his flies, exposing him to a shock of humid air. ‘What’re you doing…?’

‘Worshipping you…’ A silken slow kiss swallowed his question and left him dumbly mute as Pike feathered his lips along his jaw, down the stretch of his throat. ‘Rewarding you…’

McCoy’s eyes bulged wide as Pike slid down the length of his body, dropping gracefully to his knees. ‘Chris,’ he hissed urgently, casting a frantic glance around their isolated corridor before the wet heat of Pike’s mouth slipped around him and killed all sense of self-preservation. ‘Damn it, Chris…’ A moan escaped his throat, echoed obscenely in the narrow space even through the constant hiss of the exhaust vents. They shouldn’t be doing this here, no matter how clever or exquisite or _oh_ perfect that mouth felt on his dick. He reached blindly downward to nudge Pike reluctantly away, only to find his hand captured in a tangle of fingers that squeezed him encouragingly before drawing his hand to rest on the back of Pike’s head. The steam from the conduits made the silk-fine strands of his hair curl enticingly around McCoy’s fingers and in the next teasing curl of Pike’s tongue it made a lot more sense to hold on tighter rather than shove him away. With a deep groan, McCoy sagged back into the shuttle bulkhead and flexed his hips forward on a spike of raw need that pushed him deeper into Pike’s welcoming mouth. A hum of approval vibrated around him, chased by a tongue that slipped a sinuous path along the underside of his cock as Pike’s mouth drew back, so far back that only the faintest brush of his lips still touched him.

‘That’s more like it,’ he encouraged, barely loud enough to be heard, loosely fisting his slick length as he gazed briefly upwards. ‘There’s my good boy… my brave, beautiful man…’ He lapped at the pearlescent trace of McCoy’s arousal, drew out his low cry with a slow circle of his tongue before swallowing him whole with such enthusiasm that it was all McCoy could do to hold on tight as he rushed helplessly towards release. His fingers tugged an unheeded warning at Pike’s hair as he came apart with a shaken gasp, pulsing hot and thick against that sinful tongue. 

Despite their inappropriate surroundings, Pike took his slow, luxurious time suckling him clean, stroking up and down his trembling thighs as he drew away one nuzzling lick at a time. By the time Pike worked his way back up McCoy’s body, he had regained just enough strength to brace himself against the onslaught of a deliriously filthy kiss that nearly undid him all over again. He held onto his Chris with everything he had, sagging back into the shuttle as the aftershocks of orgasm strummed through his limbs.

‘Go hit the showers, beautiful,’ Pike hushed into his ear, hands still kneading at his hips. ‘Scrub up and meet me outside, because I’m going to throw you down on my bed, tear that tidy cadet’s uniform off your hot body and fuck you until you scream my name.’ 

The shudder that ripped down McCoy’s spine could have dropped him to his knees if Pike weren’t still pinning him hard to the bulkhead. ‘ _Fuck._ ’

‘Exactly.’ A hot tongue dragged up his neck, terminated in a bite to his earlobe. ‘Showers. _Now._ ’

‘Yes, sir.’ He grinned sharply as Pike groaned into his skin, nuzzling in a strangely tender moment before he withdrew one reluctant step at a time.

‘See you soon,’ Pike promised, barely audible as he slipped away, taking the unseen path along their service corridor. McCoy watched him go, waiting until long after he had disappeared from view and most of the strength had returned to his legs before making his own discrete way back into the busy flow of activity on the other side of the shuttle. The irritating herd of cadets was already slowing his progress to the locker room, and McCoy was too preoccupied trying to recall whether Pike had suggested meeting outside or some other subterfuge to realize that one of those red uniforms was rushing directly into his path until he was nearly bowled over by a floundering armful of Jim Kirk.

‘Whoa…’ His knees nearly buckled for the second time in too damn short a while, struggling to withstand the onslaught of Jim’s overenthusiastic hug. ‘And how the hell did you find out… oh, never mind.’

‘I didn’t need to find out,’ Jim said fiercely, ‘I just knew you would pass.’ 

McCoy’s brow furrowed, flattered yet skeptical. ‘Did you now.’

‘I may have hacked into Commander Lopez’s account just to confirm,’ he admitted as they drew apart, though Jim kept a firm grip on his upper arms all the same. 

‘That’s no way to treat a lady.’ 

Jim wrinkled his nose. ‘Who, Commander Lopez?’

‘She was mighty nice,’ he muttered defensively.

‘You only say that because she passed you,’ he scoffed, turning to sling an arm around McCoy’s shoulder. ‘C’mon, time to celebrate. You won’t _believe_ the night I’ve lined up for us…’

‘What, now?’ Panic stuttered his steps, but Jim was already pushing them onward through the crowd. 

‘When the hell else?’ he shrugged. ‘This is your big night, Bones.’

‘But… I need to shower…’

‘Whatever, you smell great,’ Jim shot back, but McCoy wasn’t listening anymore, not now he had spotted Pike at the end of the hangar bay, waiting and watchful and too damn intelligent to not fully understand how circumstance had twisted so sharply against them both.

He saw the moment, the beat in Pike’s razor-sharp brain that swept the dismay from his face before it had a chance to be born. It broke his goddamn heart, even as relief flooded every other nerve in his body as Pike strode forward on a swagger and a smile. 

‘Cadet Kirk.’ 

Jim broke their embrace, bounced eagerly ahead to greet the approaching captain. ‘Sir,’ he replied, though his bright eyes and boundless energy undermined any formality in the greeting. Not that Pike seemed to mind in the slightest: speeding his step and extending his hand to catch Jim’s in a vigorous handshake as though he had materialized there for the sole purpose of seeing his favourite prodigy. The warmth in his smile, the hand on the shoulder was all perfectly convincing. McCoy should have been pleased, relieved.

Bullshit.

‘I heard McCoy here just passed his level one, no small thanks to you.’ Pike’s smile was alarmingly genuine, his hand lingering long on Jim’s shoulder. ‘You did good, son.’

Much to McCoy’s surprise, Jim ducked his head, as though embarrassed by the smile pulling at his lips. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Plenty to celebrate for both of you, I’m sure.’ Pike’s hand fell away, his smile holding steady as his eye swept sideways to catch McCoy in a half-heartbeat of recognition. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Gentlemen.’

‘You mean you don’t want to buy me a drink to congratulate me?’ Jim called out as Pike turned to leave, his bashfulness clearly burned away by the excuse to flirt. Much to McCoy’s growing irritation, Pike actually paused to glance back over his shoulder with a familiarly playful spark in his eye. 

‘Some other time, if you’re extremely lucky,’ he threw back. ‘For now, I think it’s the good doctor here who deserves the drink. Maybe after you buy it for him, he’ll do you a favour and tell you all about Starfleet’s fraternization regs.’

‘Oh, I’ll tell him alright,’ McCoy muttered darkly. 

Like the worst of his words, they tripped involuntarily from his tongue, slipped loose before he could choke them back. He knew his mistake as soon as two pairs of startled blue eyes flicked fast at him: squinting in surprise, wide with shock. 

The latter was barely recognizable on Pike’s face; his mouth moved noiselessly, suspended between incredulity and something like anticipation before the forced awkwardness of Jim’s laugh broke the spell.

‘Easy, Bones,’ he said brightly, flinging that clinging arm about his shoulders again. ‘The captain knows I’m saving myself for graduation. Right, sir?’

‘I… can’t think of a remotely appropriate answer to that question,’ Pike said slowly as the outward appearance of good-natured calm blunted the edge of his gaze. ‘I’d take this opportunity to make a strategic retreat if I were you, son.’

‘If it means I get to launch another attack later, I’ll take you up on that,’ Jim winked back. ‘Bones?’

He stared back at his Chris, stared hard enough to know that his warning hadn’t been for Jim’s hearing alone. That upspoken denial taunted at the disappointment hidden deep in McCoy’s chest, a regret he hoped he was just as good at concealing.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed roughly. ‘Good idea. Sir,’ he added softly, taking what little satisfaction he could from the dilation of Pike’s pupils before moving heavily onward.

‘Such a tease.’

‘What?’ McCoy snapped his head around sharply.

‘Captain Pike,’ Jim explained in a mournful tone. ‘He’s a total flirt, and he knows it.’

‘Takes one to know one,’ he grumbled gloomily.

‘You alright?’

McCoy slowed as they neared the hangar’s exit, close enough to feel the first hint of cool, natural air on his heated skin. That more than sense cooled the acidic urge to answer Jim’s too-casual question with more than he would ever want to know – with the unvarnished truth beneath two years of lies, with every ugly jealousy and possessive nerve in his body.

Only there was no way he could do it, not with those big blue eyes staring expectantly into him with far more excitement than worry. Even he couldn’t ruin that.

‘Yeah,’ he decided. ‘Yeah, nothing that drink you’re buying me won’t fix.’

‘There’s way more than one drink waiting for you,’ Jim promised with a mischievous grin. ‘With what I have lined up, you might not even remember today by this time tomorrow.’

‘Like to see you try it,’ he shot back with his bravest smirk. If Jim could teach him to fly, one more miracle didn’t seem like too much to ask.


End file.
